The Writings of Henry David Thoreau in 20 Volumes

MANUSCRIPT EDITION

LIMITED TO SIX HUNDRED COPIES

/i£

NUMBER

Star-flowers ( Trientalis ) ( 'page 266)

THE WRITINGS OF

HENRY DATID THOREAU

JOURNAL

EDITED BY BRADFOBI* IOK*’ l\

II

1 80O-S E lrrtMBEIi . 1851

BOSTON AN 1

nouonroN mifflin and co. . \

Fair Haven Fond from the Cliffs

* n-i — '

THE WRITINGS OF

HENRY DAVID THOREAU

JOURNAL

EDITED BY BRADFORD TORREY
II

1850-Seftembeb 15, 1851

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
MDCCCCVI

LIBRa* t ,

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORiHA.
DAVIS

O.C.D. LIB

COPYRIGHT 1906 BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.

All rights reserved

*

\

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I. 1850 (jEt. 32-33)

The Religion of the Hindoos — Narrow Shoes — The Town
of Bedford — A Visit to Haverhill and the Dustin House —
Taste in Eating — Sawing Buttonwood Logs — The Insanity
of Heroes — The Sand Cherry — Life in a Small Meadow —
Turtle and Horned Pout — Limestone — The Energy of Our
Ancestors — A New Bosphorus — Sippio Brister’s Grave¬
stone — Fences — Driving Cows to Pasture — Setting Fire to
the Woods — The Incendiary — The View from Goodman’s
Hill in Sudbury — A Burner of Brush — Tending a Burning —
The Regularity of the Cars — The Levels of Life — A Pro¬
posed Method of Fighting Wood-Fires — The Yezidis — In¬
sects over the River — Cows in a Pasture — Horses Fighting

— The Advantages of a Fire in the Woods — Walking by Night

— An Indian Squaw — A Button from the Marquis of Ossoli’s
Coat — Bones on the Beach — Fresh Water in Sand-Bars —
Rags and Meanness — Tobacco Legislation — An Ideal
Friend — Conforming — A Drunken Dutchman — Legs as
Compasses — Walks about Concord — Meadow-Hay — The
Old Marlborough Road — Surface of Water — The Money-
Digger — The Railroad — Tall Ambrosia — The Ways of
Cows — Flocks of Birds — A Great Blue Heron — The Elm

— Uncle Charles Dunbar — Lines on a Flower growing in the
Middle of the Road — A Beautiful Heifer — Water the Only
Drink — On the River — Music — The Canadian Excur¬
sion — Living and Loving one’s Life — Canadian Houses

— A Frog in the Milk — Apostrophe to Diana — Aground
at Patchogue — The Relics of a Human Body on the Beach

— Echoes — Sawmills — Begging Indians — The Indian and
his Baskets — Uncle Charles on the Dock at New York —
Nature in November — The Approach of Winter — Changes

vi

CONTENTS

made in Views from the cutting down of Woods — Cats run
Wild — The Growth of a Wood — Canadian Greatcoats — A
Root Fence — Wild Apples — An Old Bone — A Miser and
his Surveyor — The Remains of a Coal-Pit — The Pickerel in
the Brooks — Wildness — The Attraction of the West — Fright¬
ened Cows — The Passing of the Wild Apple — Begging Gov¬
ernments — Old Maps — The First Cold Day — A New Kind
of Cranberry — The Discoveries of the Unscientific Man —

The Sportiveness of Cattle — Fair Haven Pond — Friends and
Acquaintances — Summer Days in Winter — A Muskrat on
the Ice — An Encampment of Indians at Concord — Indian
Lore — Indian Inventions — Instinct in Women — The Little
Irish Boy — Puffballs — An Ocean of Mist.

CHAPTER II. December, 1850 (Mr. 33) 120

Moss — Circulation in Plants — The First Snow — Blue-Curls
and Indigo-weed — Hands and Feet — Sweet-Gale — Prome-
thea Cocoons — Frozen-thawed Apples — Swamps in Winter

— An Old-fashioned Snow-Storm — A Shrike with Prey —

The Death of Friends — Notes from Gordon Cumming —

Blue Jays.

CHAPTER III. January-April, 1851 (Mr. 33) 134

A Visit to the Clinton Gingham-Mills — Behavior — The
Knowledge of an Unlearned Man — Snow-covered Hills —

The Walker Errant — Sauntering — Freedom — F. A. Mi-
chaux on Certain Trees — Divine Communications — The
Tameness of English Literature — Quotations from Ovid —
Panoramas of the Rhine and the Mississippi — The Fertility of
America — Midwinter — Sir John Mandeville on the Peoples
of the Earth — A Society for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance
— America the She Wolf To-day — The Gregariousness of Man

— The Edge of the Meadow — Fleets of Ice-Flakes — Water¬
falls within Us — The Ice-Flakes again — Antiquity — The
Health of the Farmer — Eating — The Fallibility of Friends

— Moral Freedom — Manners and Character — Getting a
Living — Actinism — The Floating Crust of the Meadow —

CONTENTS

vii

Mythology and Geology — Law and Lawlessness — Carrying
off Sims — Governor Boutwell — Concord and Slavery — The
Fugitive Slave Law — Slavery and the Press — Mahomet —

The Sentence of the Judge — The Servility of Newspapers — A
False Idea of Liberty — Real and Actual Communications —

The Cat — Love and Marriage.

CHAPTER IV. May, 1851 0®r. 83) 186

Purity — An Optical Illusion — A Mountain Tam — Experi¬
ments in Living — The Caliph Omar — The Harivansa —

The Taming of Beasts and Men — The Study of Nature —
False Teeth or a False Conscience — Taking Ether — Moon¬
light — Notes from Michaux — Vegetation and Human Life

— The Development of the Mind — The Mind and its Roots

— Man our Contemporary — Names — Wild Apples and their
Names — An Inspiring Regret — Medical Botany — The
Designs of Providence — True Sites for Houses — The View
from the Wayland Hills — An Organ-Grinder — Materia
Medica — Tobacco — More Names for Wild Apples.

CHAPTER V. June, 1851 (Mr. 33) 224

A Visit to Worcester — A Fallen Oak — Angelica and Hem¬
lock — Transcendentalism — The Past and the Future —
Who boosts You ? — F. A. Michaux on the Ohio — Various
Trees — Our Garments and the Trees* — A Moonlight Walk

— Crossing Bridges at Night — Air-Strata at Night — A Book
of the Seasons — South American Notes from Darwin’s “Voy¬
age of a Naturalist” — Moonlight — Breathing — The Shim¬
mering of the Moon’s Reflections on the Rippled Surface of a
Pond — The Bittern’s Pumping — Twilight — Music Out-of-
Doors — The Whip-poor-will’s Moon — Fireflies — Darwin
again — The Rapid Growth of Grass — The Birch the Sur¬
veyor’s Tree — Criticism — Calmness — The Wood Thrush’s
Song — The Ox’s Badges of Servitude — A Visit to a Me¬
nagerie — Old Country Methods of Farming — The Hypse-
thral Character of the “Week” — Dog and Wagon — Haying
begun — The Fragrance of the Fir.

viii CONTENTS

CHAPTER VI. July, 1851 GEt. 33-54)

280

Travellers heard talking at Night — Potato-Fields — Hub¬
bard’s Bridge — Moonlight — Sam, the Jailer — Intimations
of the Night — Shadows of Trees — Perez Blood’s Telescope —
The Chastity of the Mind — A Rye-Field — A Visit to the Cam¬
bridge Observatory — Charles River — A Gorgeous Sunset —
The Forms of Clouds — A Moonlight Walk — The Light of
the Moon — Waterfalls within Us — Another Moonlight Walk

— Eating a Raw Turnip — The Experience of Ecstasy — The
Song Sparrow — Berry-Picking — Signs of the Season — The
First of the Dog-Days — Pitch Pine Woods — The Ideal Self

— The Life of the Spirit — A Proposed Occupation — The
River’s Crop — An Old Untravelled Road — A Black Veil —
A Human Footprint — The Gentleman — An Immortal Mel¬
ody — Wild Pigeons — Mirabeau as a Highwayman — Am¬
brosial Fog — Maimed Geniuses — The Charm of the French
Names in Canada — Walking and Writing — Swallows — The
Moods of the Mind — Drought — A South Shore Excursion —
On the Hingham Boat — Hull — The Cohasset Shore — Dan¬
iel Webster’s Farm — A Mackerel Schooner — Clark’s Island

— A Boat Swamped — Digging Clams — The Rut of the Sea

— Seals in Plymouth Harbor — Shells and Seaweeds — The
Sailboat — Webster’s Nearest Neighbor — A Hard Man —
Plymouth.

CHAPTER VII. August, 1851 (Mr. 34)

Return to Concord — An Ill-managed Menagerie — A Sum¬
mer Evening — A Musical Performer — The Moon and the
Clouds — The Nearness of the Wild — Travelling — Profit¬
able Interest — The Spread of Inventions — The Inspiring
Melodies — An Unheeded Warning — Sounds of a Summer
Night — The Moon’s War with the Clouds — First Signs of
Morning — The Dawn — Thistle and Bee — Cool Weather

— Delight in Nature — The Snake in the Stomach — The Hay¬
ing — Dogs and Cows — British Soldiers in Canada — Lib¬
erty in Canada — Canadian Fortifications — Prehensile Intel¬
lects — The Poet and his Moods — Knowing one’s Subject —

367

CONTENTS

IX

The Revolution of the Seasons — Rattlesnake-Plantain — The
Creak of the Crickets — Botanical Terms — The Cardinal-
Flower — The Canadian Feudal System — Government — The
Flowering of the Vervain — The Conspicuous Flowers of the
Season — The Visit to Canada — De Quincey’s Style — Char¬
ity and Almshouses — Men observed as Animals — The Price
Farm Road — Snake and Toad — An August Wind — Cut¬
ting Turf — Burning Brush — The Telegraph — The For¬
tress of Quebec — A Faithful Flower — Potato Balls — The
Seal of Evening — Solitude in Concord — The Names of
Plants.

CHAPTER VIII. September, 1851 (Mr. 34)

Disease the Rule of Existence — Finding one’s Faculties —
Telegraphs — Moose-lipped Words — Cato’s De Re Rustica

— The Horse and Man — Health and Disease — The Tele¬
graph Harp — Walking in England — A Walk to Boon’s Pond
in Stow — The Farmer and His Oxen — Tempe and Arcadia

— Footpaths for Poets — Writing on Many Subjects —
Dammed Streams — The Dog of the Woods — J. J. G.
Wilkinson — Fastidiousness — A Lake by Moonlight — A
Formalist — The Fullness of Life — Creatures of Institutions
Moments of Inspiration — Gladness — A September Evening

— Singing heard at Night — Moonlight on the River — Fair
Haven by Moonlight — Northern Lights — Soaring Hawks —
The Grass and the Year — The Sky at Night — A Factory-Bell

— Sunrise — The Color of the Poke — The Stone-mason’s
Craft — Moral Effort — Benvenuto Cellini — An Endymion
Sleep — The Mountains in the Horizon — The Telegraph
Harp — Perambulating the Bounds — A Pigeon-Place — An
Elusive Scent — The Cross-leaved Polygala.

440

ILLUSTRATIONS

STAR-FLOWERS (tRIENTALIs) Carbon photograph {page 266)

Frontispiece

FAIR HAVEN POND FROM THE CLIFFS Colored plate

FAIR HAVEN POND FROM THE CLIFFS 10

NOVEMBER WOODS 86

FIRST SNOW 122

MIDWINTER 150

TOWN BROOK, PLYMOUTH 364

JOURNAL

VOLUME II

THE JOURNAL OF
HENRY DAVID THOREAU

VOLUME II

I

1850 GET. 32-83) 1

The Hindoos are more serenely and thoughtfully
religious than the Hebrews. They have perhaps a purer,
more independent and impersonal knowledge of God.
Their religious books describe the first inquisitive and
contemplative access to God; the Hebrew bible a con¬
scientious return, a grosser and more personal repent¬
ance. Repentance is not a free and fair highway to
God. A wise man will dispense with repentance. It is
shocking and passionate. God prefers that you approach
him thoughtful, not penitent, though you are the chief
of sinners. It is only by forgetting yourself that you
draw near to him.

The calmness and gentleness with which the Hindoo
philosophers, approach and discourse on forbidden
themes is admirable.

1 [A new book is begun here, but the first date is that of May 12,
1850, on p. 7 (p. 8 of the original). The first entries may or may
not belong to this year.]

JOURNAL

[1850

What extracts from the Vedas I have read fall on me
like the light of a higher and purer luminary, which
describes a loftier course through a purer stratum, —
free from particulars, simple, universal. It rises on me
like the full moon after the stars have come out, wading
through some far summer stratum of the sky.

The Vedant teaches how, “by forsaking religious
rites,” the votary may “ obtain purification of mind.”

One wise sentence is worth the state of Massachusetts
many times over.

The Vedas contain a sensible account of God.

The religion and philosophy of the Hebrews are those
of a wilder and ruder tribe, wanting the civility and
intellectual refinements and subtlety of the Hindoos.

Man flows at once to God as soon as the channel of
purity, physical, intellectual, and moral, is open.

With the Hindoos virtue is an intellectual exercise,
not a social and practical one. It is a knowing, not a
doing.

I do not prefer one religion or philosophy to another.
I have no sympathy with the bigotry and ignorance
which make transient and partial and puerile distinc¬
tions between one man’s faith or form of faith and
another’s, — as Christian and heathen. I pray to be
delivered from narrowness, partiality, exaggeration,
bigotry. To the philosopher all sects, all nations, are
alike. I like Brahma, Hari, Buddha, the Great Spirit,
as well as God.

1850]

NARROW SHOES

5

[Part of leaf missing here.]

A page with as true and inevitable and deep a meaning
as a hillside, a book which Nature shall own as her own
flower, her own leaves; with whose leaves her own shall
rustle in sympathy imperishable and russet; which shall
push out with the skunk-cabbage in the spring. I am not
offended by the odor of the skunk in passing by sacred
places.1 I am invigorated rather. It is a reminiscence of
immortality borne on the gale. O thou partial world, when
wilt thou know God ? I would as soon transplant this
vegetable to Polynesia or to heaven with me as the violet.

Shoes are commonly too narrow. If you should take
off a gentleman’s shoes, you would find that his foot
was wider than his shoe. Think of his wearing such an
engine! walking in it many miles year after year! A
shoe which presses against the sides of the foot is to be
condemned. To compress the foot like the Chinese is as
bad as to compress the head like the Flatheads, for the
head and the foot are one body. The narrow feet, — they
greet each other on the two sides of the Pacific. A
sensible man will not follow fashion in this respect, but
reason. Better moccasins, or sandals, or even bare feet,
than a tight shoe. A wise man will wear a shoe wide
and large enough, shaped somewhat like the foot, and
tied with a leather string, and so go his way in peace,
letting his foot fall at every step.

When your shoe chafes your feet, put in a mullein leaf.

When I ask for a garment of a particular form, my
tailoress tells me gravely, “ They do not make them so
1 [See Excursions, p. 228 ; Riv. 280.]

6

JOURNAL

[1850

now,” and I find it difficult to get made what I want,
simply because she cannot believe that I mean what I
say; it surpasses her credulity. Properly speaking, my
style is as fashionable as theirs. “They do not make
them so now,” as if she quoted the Fates! I am for a
moment absorbed in thought, thinking, wondering who
they are, where they five. It is some Oak Hall, O call,
O. K., all correct establishment which she knows but I
do not. Oliver Cromwell. I emphasize and in imagina¬
tion italicize each word separately of that sentence to
come at the meaning of it.1

Or you may walk into the foreign land of Bedford,
where not even yet, after four or five, or even seven or
eight, miles, does the sky shut down, but the airy and
crystal dome of heaven arches high over all, when you
did not suspect that there was so much daylight under
its crystal dome, and from the hill eastward perchance
see the small town of Bedford standing stately on the
crest of a hill like some city of Belgrade with one hun¬
dred and fifty thousand inhabitants. I wonder if Mr.
Fitch fives there among them.

How many noble men and women must have their
abode there! So it seems, — I trust that so it is, — but
I did not go into Bedford that time. But alas ! I have
been into a village before now, and there was not a man
of a large soul in it. In what respect was it better than a
village of prairie-dogs.2 I mean to hint no reproach even
by impfica- [part of leaf torn off].

1 l Walden , p. 27; Riv. 41, 42.]

2 [See Walden , p. 185; Riv. 262.]

THE DUSTIN HOUSE

7

1850]

Sunday, May 12, 1850, visited the site of the Dustin
house in the northwest part of Haverhill, now but a slight
indentation in a corn-field, three or four feet deep, with
an occasional brick and cellar-stone turned up in plow¬
ing. The owner, Dick Kimball, made much of the corn
grown in this hole, some ears of which were sent to
Philadelphia. The apple tree which is said to have stood
north from the house at a considerable distance is gone.
A brick house occupied by a descendant is visible from
the spot, and there are old cellar-holes in the neigh¬
borhood, probably the sites of some of the other eight
houses which were burned on that day. It is a question
with some which is the site of the true Dustin house.

Also visited the same day an ancient garrison -house
now occupied by Fred. Ayer, who said it was built one
hundred and fifty or one hundred and sixty years ago
by one Emerson, and that several oxen were killed by
lightning while it was building. There was also a pear
tree nearly as old as the house. It was built of larger
and thicker and harder brick than are used nowadays,
and on the whole looked more durable and still likely to
stand a hundred years. The hard burnt blue-black ends
of some of the bricks were so arranged as to checker
the outside. He said it was considered the handsomest
house in Haverhill when it was built, and people used
to come up from town some two miles to see it. He
thought that they were the original doors which we saw.
There were but few windows, and most of them were
about two feet and a half long and a foot or more wide,
only to fire out of. The oven originally projected out¬
side. There were two large fireplaces. I walked into

8

JOURNAL

[1850

one, by stooping slightly, and looked up at the sky.
Ayer said jokingly that some said they were so made
to shoot wild geese as they flew over. The chains and
hooks were suspended from a wooden bar high in the
chimney. The timbers were of immense size.

Fourteen vessels in or to be in the port of Haverhill,
laden with coal, lumber, lime, wood, and so forth. Boys
go [to] the wharf with their fourpences to buy a bundle
of laths to make a hen-house; none elsewhere to be had.

Saw two or three other garrison-houses. Mrs. Dustin
was an Emerson, one of the family for whom I surveyed.

Measured a buttonwood tree in Haverhill, one of
twenty and more set out about 1739 on the banks of
the Merrimack. It was thirteen and eight twelfths
feet in circumference at three and a half feet from the
ground.

Jewett’s steam mill is profitable, because the planing
machine alone, while that is running, makes shavings
and waste enough to feed the engine, to say nothing of
the sawdust from the sawmill; and the engine had not
required the least repair for several years. Perhaps, as
there is not so much sawing and planing to be done in
England, they therefore may not find steam so cheap as
water.

A single gentle rain in the spring makes the grass look
many shades greener.

It is wisest to live without any definite and recognized
object from day to day, — any particular object, — for
the world is round, and we are not to live on a tangent or

TASTE IN EATING

1850]

9

a radius to the sphere. As an old poet says, “ though
man proposeth, God disposeth all.”

Our thoughts are wont to run in muddy or dusty ruts.

I too revive as does the grass after rain. We are never
so flourishing, our day is never so fair, but that the sun
may come out a little brighter through mists and we
yearn to live a better life. What have we to boast of ?
We are made the very sewers, the cloacae, of nature.

If the hunter has a taste for mud turtles and musk¬
rats and skunks and other such savage titbits, the fine
lady indulges a taste for some form of potted cheese,
or jelly made of a calf’s foot, or anchovies from over the
water, and they are even. He goes to the mill-pond, she
to her preserve pot. I wonder how he, I wonder how
I, can live this slimy, beastly kind of life, eating and
drinking.1

The fresh foliage of the woods in May, when the leaves
are about as big as a mouse’s ear, putting out like taller
grasses and herbs.

In all my rambles I have seen no landscape which can
make me forget Fair Haven. I still sit on its Cliff in a
new spring day, and look over the awakening woods and
the river, and hear the new birds sing, with the same
delight as ever. It is as sweet, a mystery to me as ever,
what this world is. Fair Haven Lake in the south, with
its pine-covered island and its meadows, the hickories
putting out fresh young yellowish leaves, and the oaks
light-grayish ones, while the oven-bird thrums his
sawyer-like strain, and the chewink rustles through the
1 [1 Walden , p. 241; Riv. 340.]

10

JOURNAL

[1850

dry leaves or repeats his jingle on a tree-top, and the
wood thrush, the genius of the wood, whistles for the
first time his clear and thrilling strain, — it sounds as it
did the first time I heard it. The sight of these budding
woods intoxicates me, — this diet drink.

The strong-colored pine, the grass of trees, in the midst
of which other trees are but as weeds or flowers, — a
little exotic.

In the row of buttonwood trees on the banks of the
Merrimack in Haverhill, I saw that several had been cut
down, probably because of their unsightly appearance,
they all suffering from the prevalent disease which has
attacked the buttonwood of late years, and one large one
still resting on its stump where it had fallen. It seemed
like a waste of timber or of fuel, but when I inquired
about it, they answered that the millers did not like to
saw it. Like other ornamental trees which have stood
by the roadside for a hundred years, the inhabitants
have been accustomed to fasten their horses to them,
and have driven many spikes into them for this purpose.
One man, having carried some buttonwood logs to mill,
the miller agreed to saw them if he would make good the
injury which might be done to his saw. The other agreed
to it, but almost at the first clip they ran on to a spike and
broke the saw, and the owner of the logs cried, “ Stop ! ”
he would have no more sawed. They are difficult to split,
beside, and make poor timber at best, being very liable
to warp.

The “itinerary distance” between two points, a con¬
venient expression.

11

1850] THE INSANITY OF HEROES

Humboldt says, “It is still undetermined where life
is most abundant: whether on the earth or in the
fathomless depths of the ocean.”

It was a mirage , what in Sanscrit, according to
Humboldt, is called “ the thirst of the gazelle.”

Nothing memorable was ever accomplished in a
prosaic mood of mind. The heroes and discoverers
have found true more than was previously believed,
only when they were expecting and dreaming of some¬
thing more than their contemporaries dreamed of, —
when they were in a frame of mind prepared in some
measure for the truth.

Referred to the world’s standard, the hero, the dis¬
coverer, is insane, its greatest men are all insane. At
first the world does not respect its great men. Some
rude and simple nations go to the other extreme and
reverence all kinds of insanity. Humboldt says, speak¬
ing of Columbus approaching the New World: “The
grateful coolness of the evening air, the ethereal purity
of the starry firmament, the balmy fragrance of flowers,
wafted to him by the land breeze, all led him to sup¬
pose (as we are told by Herrera, in the Decades (5)),
that he was approaching the garden of Eden, the sacred
abode of our first parents. The Orinoco seemed to him
one of the four rivers which, according to the venerable
tradition of the ancient world, flowed from Paradise,
to water and divide the surface of the earth, newly
adorned with plants.”

Expeditions for the discovery of El Dorado, and also

JOURNAL

12

[1850

of the Fountain of Youth, led to real, though perhaps
not compensatory, discoveries.1

I have heard my brother playing on his flute at even¬
ing half a mile off through the houses of the village,
every note with perfect distinctness. It seemed a more
beautiful communication with me than the sending up
of a rocket would have been. So, if I mistake not, the
sound of blasting rocks has been heard from down
the river as far as Lowell, — some twenty miles by its
course, — where they were making a deep cut for the
railroad.

The sand cherry ( Primus depressa Pursh., Cerasus
pumila Mx.) grew about my door, and near the end of
May enlivened my yard with its umbels arranged cylin-
drically about its short branches. In the fall, weighed
down with the weight of its large and handsome cher¬
ries, it fell over in wreath-like rays on every side. I
tasted them out of compliment to nature, but I never
learned to love them.2

If the long-continued rains cause the seeds to rot in
the ground and destroy the potatoes in the low lands,
they are good for the grass on the uplands, though the
farmers say it is not so sweet.8

As I walked, I was intoxicated with the slight spicy
odor of the hickory buds and the bruised bark of the
black birch, and, in the fall, the pennyroyal.

1 [Cape Cod, p. 121; Riv. 143, 144.] * [Walden, p. 126; Riv. 178.]

8 [I Walden , p. 145; Riv. 206.]

13

1850] LIFE IN A SMALL MEADOW

Many a time I have expected to find a woodchuck,
or rabbit, or a gray squirrel, when it was the ground-
robin rustling the leaves.

I have been surprised to discover the amount and
the various kinds of life which a single shallow swamp
will sustain. On the south side of the pond, not more
than a quarter of a mile from it, is a small meadow of
ten or a dozen acres in the woods, considerably lower
than Walden, and which by some is thought to be fed by
the former by a subterranean outlet, — which is very
likely, for its shores are quite springy and its supply of
water is abundant and unfailing, — indeed tradition
says that a sawmill once stood over its outlet, though
its whole extent, including its sources, is not more than
I have mentioned, — a meadow through which the
Fitchburg Railroad passes by a very high causeway,
which required many a carload of sand, where the
laborers for a long time seemed to make no progress,
for the sand settled so much in the night that by morn¬
ing they were where they were the day before, and
finally the weight of the sand forced upward the ad¬
jacent crust of the meadow with the trees on it many
feet, and cracked it for some rods around. It is a
wet and springy place throughout the summer, with
a ditch-like channel, and in one part water stands the
year round, with cat-o’-nine-tails and tussocks and
muskrats* cabins rising above it, where good cran¬
berries may be raked if you are careful to anticipate
the frost which visits this cool hollow unexpectedly
early. Well, as I was saying, I heard a splashing in the
shallow and muddy water and stood awhile to observe

14

JOURNAL

[1850

the cause of it. Again and again I heard and saw the
commotion, but could not guess the cause of it, — what
kind of life had its residence in that insignificant pool.
We sat down on the hillside. Ere long a muskrat came
swimming by as if attracted by the same disturbance,
and then another and another, till three had passed, and
I began to suspect that they were at the bottom of it.
Still ever and anon I observed the same commotion in
the waters over the same spot, and at length I observed
the snout of some creature slyly raised above the surface
after each commotion, as if to see if it were observed
by foes, and then but a few rods distant I saw another
snout above the water and began to divine the cause of
the disturbance. Putting off my shoes and stockings,
I crept stealthily down the hill and waded out slowly
and noiselessly about a rod from the firm land, keep¬
ing behind the tussocks, till I stood behind the tussock
near which I had observed the splashing. Then, sud¬
denly stooping over it, I saw through the shallow but
muddy water that there was a mud turtle there, and
thrusting in my hand at once caught him by the claw,
and, quicker than I can tell it, heaved him high and
dry ashore; and there came out with him a large pout
just dead and partly devoured, which he held in his
jaws. It was the pout in his flurry and the turtle in
his struggles to hold him fast which had created the
commotion. There he had lain, probably buried in the
mud at the bottom up to his eyes, till the pout came
sailing over, and then this musky lagune had put forth
in the direction of his ventral fins, expanding suddenly
under the influence of a more than vernal heat, — there

15

1850] TURTLE AND HORNED POUT

are sermons in stones, aye and mud turtles at the bot¬
toms of the pools, — in the direction of his ventral fins,
his tender white belly, where he kept no eye; and the
minister squeaked his last.1 Oh, what an eye was there,
my countrymen ! buried in mud up to the lids, meditat¬
ing on what? sleepless at the bottom of the pool, at
the top of the bottom, directed heavenward, in no dan¬
ger from motes. Pouts expect their foes not from be¬
low. Suddenly a mud volcano swallowed him up, seized
his midriff; he fell into those relentless jaws from which
there is no escape, which relax not their hold even in
death.2 There the pout might calculate on remaining
until nine days after the head was cut off. Sculled
through Heywood’s shallow meadow, not thinking of
foes, looking through the water up into the sky. I saw
his [the turtle’s] brother sunning and airing his broad
back like a ship bottom up which had been scuttled,
— foundered at sea. I had no idea that there was so
much going on in Heywood’s meadow.

The pickerel commonly lie perfectly still at night,
like sticks, in very shallow water near the shore near
a brook’s mouth. I have seen a large one with a deep
white wound from a spear, cutting him half in two,
unhealed and unhealable, fast asleep, and forked him
into my boat. I have struck a pickerel sound asleep
and knew that I cut him almost in two, and the next
moment heard him go ashore several rods off; for
being thus awakened in their dreams they shoot off
with one impulse, intending only to abandon those
parts, without considering exactly to what places they
1 [See Journal , vol. i, p. 475.] 2 [Charming, p. 298.]

16

JOURNAL

[1850

shall go. One night a small pickerel, which the boat
had probably struck in his sleep, leaped into the boat
and so was secured without a wound.

The chub is a soft fish and tastes like boiled brown
paper salted.

I was as interested in the discovery of limestone as
if it had been gold, and wondered that I had never
thought of it before. Now all things seemed to radiate
round limestone, and I saw how the farmers lived near
to, or far from, a locality of limestone. I detected it
sometimes in walls, and surmised from what parts it
was probably carted; or when I looked down into an
old deserted well, I detected it in the wall, and found
where the first settlers had quarried it extensively. I
read a new page in the history of these parts in the
old limestone quarries and kilns where the old settlers
found the materials of their houses; and I considered
that, since it was found so profitable even at Thomaston
to burn lime with coal dust, perchance these quarries
might, be worked again.1

When the rocks were covered with snow, I even
uncovered them with my hands, that I might observe
their composition and strata, and thought myself lucky
when the sun had laid one bare for me; but [now] that
they are all uncovered I pass by without noticing them.
There is a time for everything.

We are never prepared to believe that our ancestors
lifted large stones or built thick walls. I find that I must
have supposed that they built their bank walls of such
as a single man could handle. For since we have put
1 [See Journal , vol. v, June 10, 1853.]

1850] ENERGY OF OUR ANCESTORS 17

their lives behind us we can think of no sufficient motive
for such exertion. How can their works be so visible
and permanent and themselves so transient? When I
see a stone which it must have taken many yoke of
oxen to move, lying in a bank wall which was built two
hundred years ago, I am curiously surprised, because
it suggests an energy and force of which we have no
memorials. Where are the traces of the corresponding
moral and intellectual energy? I am not prepared to
believe that a man lived here so long ago who could ele¬
vate into a wall and properly aline a rock of great size
and fix it securely, — such an Archimedes. I walk over
the old corn-fields, it is true, where the grassy corn-hills
still appear in the woods, but there are no such traces
of them there. Again, we are wont to think that our an¬
cestors were all stalwart men, because only their most
enduring works have come down to us. I think that the
man who lifted so large a rock in the course of his
ordinary work should have had a still larger for his
monument.

I noticed a singular instance of ventriloquism to-day
in a male chewink singing on the top of a young oak.
It was difficult to believe that the last part of his strain,
the concluding jingle, did not proceed from a different
quarter, a woodside many rods off. Hip-you , he-he-he-
he. It was long before I was satisfied that the last part
was not the answer of his mate given in exact time. I
endeavored to get between the two; indeed, I seemed
to be almost between them already.

I have not seen Walden so high for many years; it is
within four feet of the pond-hole in Hubbard’s woods.

18 JOURNAL [1850

The river is higher than it has been at this season
for many years.

When the far mountains are invisible, the near ones
look the higher.

The oldest nature is elastic. I just felt myself raised
upon the swell of the eternal ocean, which came rolling
this way to land.

When my eye ranges over some thirty miles of this
globe’s surface, — an eminence green and waving, with
sky and mountains to bound it, — I am richer than
Croesus.

The variously colored blossoms of the shrub oaks
now, in May, hanging gracefully like ear-drops, or the
similar blossoms of the large oaks.

I have noticed the effect of a flag set up on a hill in
the country. It tames the landscape, subdues it to itself.
The hill looks as if it were a military post. Our green,
wild country landscape is gathered under the folds of
a flag.

A lively appearance is imparted to the landscape as
seen from Nawshawtuct, by the flood on the meadows,
— by the alternation of land and water, of green and of
light colors. The frequent causeways, and the hedge¬
rows (?) jutting into the meadows, and the islands,
have an appearance full of light and life.

To-day, May 31st, a red and white cow, being un¬
easy, broke out of the steam-mill pasture and crossed
the bridge and broke into Elijah Wood’s grounds. When
he endeavored to drive her out by the bars, she boldly
took to the water, wading first through the meadows

A NEW BOSPHORUS

19

1850]

full of ditches, and swam across the river, about forty
rods wide at this time, and landed in her own pasture
again. She was a buffalo crossing her Mississippi. This
exploit conferred some dignity on the herd in my eyes,
already dignified, and reflectedly on the river, which I
looked on as a kind of Bosphorus.

I love to see the domestic animals reassert their na¬
tive rights, — any evidence that they have not lost their
original wild habits and vigor.1

There is a sweet wild world which lies along the
strain of the wood thrush — the rich intervales which
border the stream of its song — more thoroughly genial
to my nature than any other.2

The blossoms of the tough and vivacious shrub oak
are very handsome.

I visited a retired, now almost unused, graveyard in
Lincoln to-day, where five British soldiers lie buried
who fell on the 19th April, ’75. Edmund Wheeler,
grandfather of William, who lived in the old house now
pulled down near the present, went over the next day
and carted them to this ground. A few years ago one
Felch, a phrenologist, by leave of the selectmen dug up
and took away two skulls. The skeletons were very
large, probably those of grenadiers. William Wheeler,
who was present, told me this. He said that he had
heard old Mr. Child, who lived opposite, say that when
one soldier was shot he leaped right up his full length
out of the ranks and fell dead ; and he, William Wheeler,
saw a bullet-hole through and through one of the skulls.

1 [. Excursions , p. 234; Riv. 287.] 2 [Excursions, p. 225; Riv. 276.]

20

JOURNAL

[1850

Close by stood a stone with this inscription : —

In memory of
Sippio Brister
a man of Colour
who died
Nov 1. 1820
,Et. 64.

But that is not telling us that he lived.1

There was one Newell, a tailor, his neighbor, who
became a Universalist minister. Breed put on his sign : —

Tailoring and barbering done with speed

By John C Newell & John C Breed.2

The water was over the turnpike below Master
Cheney’s when I returned (May 31st, 1850).

[A third of a page tom out here.]
that these fences, to a considerable extent, will be found
to mark natural divisions, especially if the land is not
very minutely divided, — mowing (upland and meadow)
pasture, woodland, and the different kinds of tillage.
There will be found in the farmer’s motive for setting a
fence here or there some conformity to natural limits.
These artificial divisions no doubt have the effect of
increasing the area and variety to the traveller. These
various fields taken together appear more extensive than
a single prairie of the same size would. If the divisions
corresponded [A third of a page tom out here.]

1 \Walden, p. 284; Riv. 399.]

2 [This in regard to Breed and Newell is written in a fine hand at
the top of the page, and probably belonged with something on the
part tom out.]

21

1850] DRIVING COWS TO PASTURE

The year has many seasons more than are recognized
in the almanac. There is that time about the first of
June, the beginning of summer, when the buttercups
blossom in the now luxuriant grass and I am first
reminded of mowing and of the dairy. Every one will
have observed different epochs. There is the time when
they begin to drive cows to pasture, — about the 20th
of May, — observed by the farmer, but a little arbi¬
trary year by year. Cows spend their winters in barns
and cow-yards, their summers in pastures. In summer,
therefore, they may low with emphasis, “To-morrow to
fresh woods and pastures new.” I sometimes see a
neighbor or two united with their boys and hired men
to drive their cattle to some far-off country pasture, fifty
or sixty miles distant in New Hampshire, early in the
morning, with their sticks and dogs. It is a memorable
time with the farmers* boys, and frequently their first
journey from home. The herdsman in some mountain
pasture is expecting them. And then in the fall, when
they go up to drive them back, they speculate as to
whether Janet or Brindle will know them. I heard such
a boy exclaim on such an occasion, when the calf of the
spring returned a heifer, as he stroked her side, “She
knows me, father; she knows me.” Driven up to be the
cattle on a thousand hills.

I once set fire to the woods. Having set out, one April
day, to go to the sources of Concord River in a boat
with a single companion, meaning to camp on the bank
at night or seek a lodging in some neighboring country
inn or farmhouse, we took fishing tackle with us that we
might fitly procure our food from the stream, Indian-

22

JOURNAL

[1850

like. At the shoemaker’s near the river, we obtained
a match, which we had forgotten. Though it was thus
early in the spring, the river was low, for there had not
been much rain, and we succeeded in catching a mess of
fish sufficient for our dinner before we had left the town,
and by the shores of Fair Haven Pond we proceeded
to cook them. The earth was uncommonly dry, and our
fire, kindled far from the woods in a sunny recess in
the hillside on the east of the pond, suddenly caught
the dry grass of the previous year which grew about the
stump on which it was kindled. We sprang to extinguish
it at first with our hands and feet, and then we fought
it with a board obtained from the boat, but in a few
minutes it was beyond our reach; being on the side of a
hill, it spread rapidly upward, through the long, dry,
wiry grass interspersed with bushes.

“Well, where will this end?” asked my companion.
I saw that it might be bounded by Well Meadow Brook
on one side, but would, perchance, go to the village side
of the brook. “ It will go to town,” I answered. While
my companion took the boat back down the river, I set
out through the woods to inform the owners and to raise
the town. The fire had already spread a dozen rods on
every side and went leaping and crackling wildly and
irreclaimably toward the wood. That way went the
flames with wild delight, and we felt that we had no
control over the demonic creature to which we had
given birth. We had kindled many fires in the woods
before, burning a clear space in the grass, without ever
kindling such a fire as this.

As I ran toward the town through the woods, I could

23

1850] A FIRE IN THE WOODS

see the smoke over the woods behind me marking the
spot and the progress of the flames. The first farmer
whom I met driving a team, after leaving the woods,
inquired the cause of the smoke. I told him. “ Well,”
said he, “ it is none of my stuff,” and drove along. The
next I met was the owner in his field, with whom I re¬
turned at once to the woods, running all the way. I had
already run two miles. When at length we got into the
neighborhood of the flames, we met a carpenter who
had been hewing timber, an infirm man who had been
driven off by the fire, fleeing with his axe. The farmer
returned to hasten more assistance. I, who was spent
with running, remained. What could I do alone against
a front of flame half a mile wide ?

I walked slowly through the wood to Fair Haven Cliff,
climbed to the highest rock, and sat down upon it to
observe the progress of the flames, which were rapidly
approaching me, now about a mile distant from the spot
where the fire was kindled. Presently I heard the sound
of the distant bell giving the alarm, and I knew that the
town was on its way to the scene. Hitherto I had felt
like a guilty person, — nothing but shame and regret.
But now I settled the matter with myself shortly. I said
to myself: “Who are these men who are said to be the
owners of these woods, and how am I related to them ?
I have set fire to the forest, but I have done no wrong
therein, and now it is as if the lightning had done it.
These flames are but consuming their natural food.”
(It has never troubled me from that day to this more than
if the lightning had done it. The trivial fishing was all
that disturbed me and disturbs me still.) So shortly I

24

JOURNAL

[1850

settled it with myself and stood to watch the approaching
flames.1 It was a glorious spectacle, and I was the only
one there to enjoy it. The fire now reached the base of
the cliff and then rushed up its sides. The squirrels ran
before it in blind haste, and three pigeons dashed into
the midst of the smoke. The flames flashed up the pines
to their tops, as if they were powder.

When I found I was about to be surrounded by the
fire, I retreated and joined the forces now arriving from
the town. It took us several hours to surround the
flames with our hoes and shovels and by back fires sub¬
due them. In the midst of all I saw the farmer whom
I first met, who had turned indifferently away saying
it was none of his stuff, striving earnestly to save his
corded wood, his stuff, which the fire had already seized
and which it after all consumed.

It burned over a hundred acres or more and destroyed
much young wood. When I returned home late in the
day, with others of my townsmen, I could not help
noticing that the crowd who were so ready to condemn
the individual who had kindled the fire did not sym¬
pathize with the owners of the wood, but were in fact
highly elate and as it were thankful for the opportunity
which had afforded them so much sport; and it was only
half a dozen owners, so called, though not all of them,
who looked sour or grieved, and I felt that I had a deeper
interest in the woods, knew them better and should reel
their loss more, than any or all of them. The farmer
whom I had first conducted to the woods was obliged
to ask me the shortest way back, through his own lot.

1 [See p. 40.]

THE INCENDIARY

25

1850]

Why, then, should the half-dozen owners [and] the indi¬
viduals who set the fire alone feel sorrow for the loss of
the wood, while the rest of the town have their spirits
raised? Some of the owners, however, bore their loss
like men, but other some declared behind my back that
I was a “ damned rascal; ” and a flibbertigibbet or two,
who crowed like the old cock, shouted some reminis¬
cences of “burnt woods” from safe recesses for some
years after. I have had nothing to say to any of them.
The locomotive engine has since burned over nearly all
the same ground and more, and in some measure blotted
out the memory of the previous fire. For a long time
after I had learned this lesson I marvelled that while
matches and tinder were contemporaries the world was
not consumed; why the houses that have hearths were
not burned before another day; if the flames were not
as hungry now as when I waked them. I at once ceased
to regard the owners and my own fault, — if fault there
was any in the matter, — and attended to the phenome¬
non before me, determined to make the most of it. To
be sure, I felt a little ashamed when I reflected on what
a trivial occasion this had happened, that at the time
I was no better employed than my townsmen.

That night I watched the fire, where some stumps
still flamed at midnight in the midst of the blackened
waste, wandering through the woods by myself; and
far in the night I threaded my way to the spot where
the fire had taken, and discovered the now broiled fish,
— which had been dressed, — scattered over the burnt
grass.

This has been a cool day, though the first of summer.

26

JOURNAL

[1850

The prospect of the meadows from Lee’s Hill was very
fine. I observe that the shadows of the trees are very
distinct and heavy in such a day, falling on the fresh
grass. They are as obvious as the trees themselves by
mid-afternoon. Commonly we do not make much
account of the distinct shadows of objects in the land¬
scape.

What is bare and unsightly is covered by the water
now. The verdure seems to spring directly from its
bosom; there are no stems nor roots. The meadows are
so many mirrors reflecting the light, — toward sunset
dazzlingly bright.

I visited this afternoon (June Sd) Goodman’s Hill in
Sudbury, going through Lincoln over Sherman’s Bridge
and Round Hill, and returning through the Corner. It
probably affords the best view of Concord River mead¬
ows of any hill. The horizon is very extensive as it is,
and if the top were cleared so that you could get the
western view, it would be one of the most extensive seen
from any hill in the county. The most imposing horizons
are those which are seen from tops of hills rising out of
a river valley. The prospect even from a low hill has
something majestic in it in such a case. The landscape
is a vast amphitheatre rising to its rim in the horizon.
There is a good view of Lincoln lying high up in among
the hills. You see that it is the highest town hereabouts,
and hence its fruit. The river at this time looks as large
as the Hudson. I think that a river-valley town is much
the handsomest and largest-featured, — like Concord
and Lancaster, for instance, natural centres. Upon the

A BURNER OF BRUSH

27

1850]

hills of Bolton, again, the height of land between the
Concord and Nashua, I have seen how the peach
flourishes. Nobscot, too, is quite imposing as seen from
the west side of Goodman’s Hill. On the western side
of a continuation of this hill is Wadsworth’s battle¬
field.1

Returning, I saw in Sudbury twenty-five nests of the
new (cliff ?) swallow under the eaves of a bam. They
seemed particularly social and loquacious neighbors,
though their voices are rather squeaking. Their nests,
built side by side, looked somewhat like large hornets’
nests, enough so to prove a sort of connection. Their
activity, sociability, and chattiness make them fit pen¬
sioners and neighbors of man — summer companions —
for the barn-yard.

The last of May and the first of June the farmers are
everywhere planting their com and beans and potatoes.

To-day, June 4th, I have been tending a burning in
the woods. Ray was there. It is a pleasant fact that you
will know no man long, however low in the social scale,
however poor, miserable, intemperate, and worthless he
may appear to be, a mere burden to society, but you will
find at last that there is something which he understands
and can do better than any other. I was pleased to hear
that one man had sent Ray as the one who had had the
most experience in setting fires of any man in Lincoln.
He had experience and skill as a burner of brush.

1 [Where Captain Samuel Wadsworth fell in a battle with the
Indians, April 18, 1676.]

28

JOURNAL

[June 4

You must bum against the wind always, and bum
slowly. When the fire breaks over the hoed line, a little
system and perseverance will accomplish more toward
quelling it than any man would believe. It fortunately
happens that the experience acquired is oftentimes
worth more than the wages. When a fire breaks out in
the woods, and a man fights it too near and on the side,
in the heat of the moment, without the systematic cooper¬
ation of others, he is disposed to think it a desperate
case, and that this relentless fiend will run through the
forest till it is glutted with food; but let the company
rest from their labors a moment, and then proceed more
deliberately and systematically, giving the fire a wider
berth, and the company will be astonished to find how
soon and easily they will subdue it. The woods them¬
selves furnish one of the best weapons with which to
contend with the fires that destroy them, — a pitch pine
bough. It is the best instrument to thrash it with. There
are few men who do not love better to give advice than
to give assistance.

However large the fire, let a few men go to work
deliberately but perseveringly to rake away the leaves
and hoe off the surface of the ground at a convenient
distance from the fire, while others follow with pine
boughs to thrash it with when it reaches the line, and
they will finally get round it and subdue it, and will be
astonished at their own success.

A man who is about to bum his field in the midst
of woods should rake off the leaves and twigs for the
breadth of a rod at least, making no large heaps near the
outside, and then plow around it several furrows and

TENDING A BURNING

29

1850]

break them up with hoes, and set his fire early in the
morning, before the wind rises.

As I was fighting the fire to-day, in the midst of the
roaring and crackling, — for the fire seems to snort like
a wild horse, — I heard from time to time the dying
strain, the last sigh, the fine, clear, shrill scream of
agony, as it were, of the trees breathing their last, prob¬
ably the heated air or the steam escaping from some
chink. At first I thought it was some bird, or a dying
squirrel’s note of anguish, or steam escaping from the
tree. You sometimes hear it on a small scale in the log
on the hearth. When a field is burned over, the squir¬
rels probably go into the ground. How foreign is the
yellow pine to the green woods — and what business
has it here ?

The fire stopped within a few inches of a partridge’s
nest to-day, June 4th, whom we took off in our hands
and found thirteen creamy-colored eggs. I started up a
woodcock when I went to a rill to drink, at the western¬
most angle of R. W. E.’s wood-lot.

To-night, June 5th, after a hot day, I hear the first
peculiar summer breathing of the frogs.

When all is calm, a small whirlwind will suddenly
lift up the blazing leaves and let them fall beyond
the line, and set all the woods in a blaze in a moment.
Or some slight almost invisible cinder, seed of fire, will
be wafted from the burnt district on to the dry turf
which covers the surface and fills the crevices of many
rocks, and there it will catch as in tinder, and smoke
and smoulder, perchance, for half an hour, heating
several square yards of ground where yet no fire is

JOURNAL

30

[June 4

visible, until it spreads to the leaves and the wind fans
it into a blaze.

Men go to a fire for entertainment. When I see how
eagerly men will run to a fire, whether in warm or in
cold weather, by day of by night, dragging an engine
at their heels, I am astonished to perceive how good a
purpose the love of excitement is made to serve. What
other force, pray, what offered pay, what disinterested
neighborliness could ever effect so much? No, these
are boys who are to be dealt with, and these are the
motives that prevail. There is no old man or woman
dropping into the grave but covets excitement.

Yesterday, when I walked to Goodman’s Hill, it
seemed to me that the atmosphere was never so full of
fragrance and spicy odors. There is a great variety in
the fragrance of the apple blossoms as well as their tints.
Some are quite spicy. The air seemed filled with the
odor of ripe strawberries, though it is quite too early for
them. The earth was not only fragrant but sweet and
spicy to the smell, reminding us of Arabian gales and
what mariners tell of the spice islands. The first of
June, when the lady’s-slipper and the wild pink have
come out in sunny places on the hillsides, then the
summer is begun according to the clock of the sea¬
sons.

Here it is the 8th of June, and the grass is growing
apace. In the front yards of the village they are already
beginning to cut it. The fields look luxuriant and ver¬
durous, but, as the weather is warmer, the atmosphere
is not so clear. In distant woods the partridge sits on

1850] REGULARITY OF THE CARS 31

her eggs, and at evening the frogs begin to dream and
boys begin to bathe in the river and ponds.

Cultivate the habit of early rising. It is unwise to
keep the head long on a level with the feet.

The cars come and go with such regularity and pre¬
cision, and the whistle and rumble are heard so far, that
town clocks and family clocks are already half dis¬
pensed with, and it is easy to foresee that one extensive
well-conducted and orderly institution like a railroad
will keep time and order for a whole country. The
startings and arrivals of the cars are the epochs in a
village day.1

Not till June can the grass be said to be waving in
the fields. When the frogs dream, and the grass waves,
and the buttercups toss their heads, and the heat dis¬
poses to bathe in the ponds and streams, then is summer
begun.

June 9th, 1850, Walden is still rising, though the
rains have ceased and the river has fallen very much.
I see the pollen of the pitch pine now beginning to cover
the surface of the pond. Most of the pines at the north-
northwest end have none, and on some there is only
one pollen-bearing flower.

I saw a striped snake which the fire in the woods had
killed, stiffened and partially blackened by the flames,
with its body partly coiled up and raised from the ground,
1 [ Walden , p. 130; Riv. 184, 185.]

32

JOURNAL

[June

and its head still erect as if ready to dart out its tongue
and strike its foe. No creature can exhibit more venom
than a snake, even when it is not venomous, strictly
speaking.

The fire ascended the oak trees very swiftly by the
moss which fringed them.

It has a singular effect on us when we hear the geolo¬
gist apply his terms to Judea, — speak of “limestone”
and “ blocks of trap and conglomerate, boulders of sand¬
stone and quartz ” there. Or think of a chemical analy¬
sis of the water of the Dead Sea!

The pitch and white pines are two years or more ma¬
turing their seed.

Certain rites are practiced by the Smrities (among
the Hindoos) at the digging of wells.

In early times the Brahmans, though they were the
legislators of India, possessed no executive power and
lived in poverty; yet they were for the most part inde¬
pendent and respected.

Galbraith’s Math. Tables, Edinburgh, 1834. For
descriptions of instruments he refers to Jones’s edition
of Adam’s Geom. and Graphical Essays, Biot’s Traite
d’Astronomie Physique, Base du Systeme Metrique,
Woodhouse’s, Vince’s, and Pearson’s Treatises of As¬
tronomy. For problems connected with trigonometrical
surveying, to the third volume of Hutton’s Course of
Math, by Dr. O. Gregory, Baron Zach’s work on the
Attraction of Mountains, the Base du Systeme de
Metrique Decimal, and Puissant’s Geodesie.

Olive or red seems the fittest color for a man, a deni-

1850] THE LEVELS OF LIFE 33

zen of the woods. The pale white man! I do not wonder
that the African pitied him.1

The white pine cones are now two inches long, curved
sickle-like from the topmost branches, reminding you of
the tropical trees which bear their fruit at their heads.2

The life in us is like the water in the river; it may
rise this year higher than ever it was known to before
and flood the uplands — even this may be the eventful
year — and drown out all our muskrats.3

There [are] as many strata at different levels of life
as there are leaves in a book. Most men probably have
lived in two or three. When on the higher levels we can
remember the lower levels, but when on the lower we
cannot remember the higher.

My imagination, my love and reverence and admira¬
tion, my sense of the miraculous, is not so excited by
any event as by the remembrance of my youth. Men
talk about Bible miracles because there is no miracle
in their lives. Cease to gnaw that crust. There is ripe
fruit over your head.

Woe to him who wants a companion, for he is unfit
to be the companion even of himself.

We inspire friendship in men when we have con¬
tracted friendship with the gods.

When we cease to sympathize with and to be per¬
sonally related to men, and begin to be universally re¬
lated, then we are capable of inspiring others with the
sentiment of love for us.

1 [Excursions, p. 226; Riv. 277.]

2 I find that they are last year’s. The white pine has not blossomed.

8 [Walden, p. 366; Riv. 513.]

34

JOURNAL

[June

We hug the earth. How rarely we mount! How
rarely we climb a tree! We might get a little higher,
methinks. That pine would make us dizzy. You can
see the mountains from it as you never did before.1

Shall not a man have his spring as well as the plants ?

The halo around the shadow is visible both morning
and evening.2

After this and some other fires in the woods which I
helped to put out, a more effectual system by which to
quell them occurred to me. When the bell rings, hun¬
dreds will run to a fire in the woods without carrying
any implement, and then waste much time after they
get there either in doing nothing or what is worse than
nothing, having come mainly out of curiosity, it being
as interesting to see it burn as to put it out. I thought
that it would be well if forty or fifty men in every
country town should enroll themselves into a company
for this purpose and elect suitable officers. The town
should provide a sufficient number of rakes, hoes, and
shovels, which it should be the duty of certain of the com¬
pany to convey to [the] woods in a wagon, together with
the drum, on the first alarm, people being unwilling to
carry their own tools for fear they will be lost. When
the captain or one of the numerous vice-captains ar¬
rives, having inspected the fire and taken his measures,
let him cause the roll to be called, however the men may
be engaged, and just take a turn or two with his men to
form them into sections and see where they are. Then

1 [Excursions, pp. 244, 245; Riv. 300.]

3 [W olden, pp. 224, 225; Riv. 316.]

THE YEZIDIS

35

1850]

he can appoint and equip his rake-men and his hoe-
men and his bough-men, and drop them at the proper
places, always retaining the drummer and a scout; and
when he has learned through his scout that the fire has
broken out in a new place, he, by beat of drum, can
take up one or two men of each class — as many as
can be spared — and repair to the scene of danger.

One of my friends suggests instead of the drum some
delicious music, adding that then he would come. It
might be well, to refresh the men when wearied with
work, and cheer them on their return. Music is the
proper regulator.

So, far in the East, among the Yezidis, or Worship¬
pers of the Devil, so called, and the Chaldseans, and so
forth, you may hear these remarkable disputations on
doctrinal points.1

Any reverence, even for a material thing, proceeds
from an elevation of character. Layard, speaking of the
reverence for the sun exhibited by the Yezidis, or Wor¬
shippers of the Devil, says: “They are accustomed to
kiss the object on which its first beams fall; and I
have frequently, when travelling in their company at sun¬
rise, observed them perform this ceremony. For fire,
as symbolic, they have nearly the same reverence; they
never spit into it, but frequently pass their hands through
the flame, kiss them, and rub them over their right eye¬
brow, or sometimes over the whole face.”

Who taught the oven-bird to conceal her nest ? It is
1 [Cape Cod , p. 54; Riv. 62.]

36

JOURNAL

[June

on the ground, yet out of sight. What cunning there is
in nature! No man could have arranged it more art¬
fully for the purpose of concealment. Only the escape
of the bird betrays it.

I observe to-night, June 15th, the air over the river
by the Leaning Hemlocks filled with myriads of newly
fledged insects drifting and falling as it were like snow¬
flakes from the maples, only not so white. Now they
drift up the stream, now down, while the river below is
dimpled with the fishes rising to swallow the innumer¬
able insects which have fallen [into] it and are struggling
with it. I saw how He fed his fish. They, swimming in
the dark nether atmosphere of the river, rose lazily to
its surface to swallow such swimmers of the fight upper
atmosphere as sank to its bottom.1

I picked up to-day the lower jaw of a hog, with white
and sound teeth and tusks, which reminded me that
there was an animal health and vigor distinct from the
spiritual health. This animal succeeded by other means
than temperance and purity.2

There are thirty-eight lighthouses in Massachusetts.
The fight on the Highlands of Neversink is visible the
greatest distance, viz. thirty miles. There are two there,
one revolving, one not.

The fantastic open fight crosses which the limbs of
the larch make, seen against the sky, of the sky-blue
color its foliage.

In a swamp where the trees stand up to their knees,
two or three feet deep, in the fine bushes as in a moss
bed.

1 Vide Kirby and Spence, vol. i. 8 {Walden, p. 842; Riv. 841.]

1850] COWS IN A PASTURE 37

The arbor-vitse fans, rich, heavy, elaborate, like
bead-work.

June 20. I can see from my window three or four
cows in a pasture on the side of Fair Haven Hill, a mile
and a half distant. There is but one tree in the pasture,
and they are all collected and now reposing in its shade,
which, as it is early though sultry, is extended a good
way along the ground. It makes a pretty landscape.
That must have been an epoch in the history of the cow
when they discovered to stand in the shadow of a tree.
I wonder if they are wise enough to recline on the north
side of it, that they may not be disturbed so soon. It
shows the importance of leaving trees for shade in the
pastures as well as for beauty. There is a long black
streak, and in it the cows are collected. How much
more they will need this shelter at noon ! It is a pleasant
life they lead in the summer, — roaming in well-watered
pastures, grazing, and chewing the cud in the shade, —
quite a philosophic life and favorable for contempla¬
tion, not like their pent-up winter life in close and foul
barns. If only they could say as on the prairies, “ To¬
morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.”

Cattle and horses, however, retain many of their wild
habits or instincts wonderfully. The seeds of instinct
are preserved under their thick hides, like seeds in the
bowels of the earth, an indefinite period.1 I have heard
of a horse which his master could not catch in his
pasture when the first snowflakes were falling, who per¬
sisted in wintering out. As he persisted in keeping out
1 [Excursions, p. 234; Riv. 287.]

38

JOURNAL

[June 20

of his reach, his master finally left him. When the snow
had covered the ground three or four inches deep, the
horse pawed it away to come at the grass, — just as the
wild horses of Michigan do, who are turned loose by their
Indian masters, — and so he picked up a scanty subsist¬
ence. By the next day he had had enough of free fife and
pined for his stable, and so suffered himself to be caught.

A blacksmith, my neighbor, heard a great clattering
noise the other day behind his shop, and on going out
found that his mare and his neighbor the pumpmaker’s
were fighting. They would run at one another, then
turn round suddenly and let their heels fly. The rat¬
tling of their hoofs one against the other was the noise
he heard. They repeated this several times with inter¬
vals of grazing, until one prevailed. The next day they
bore the marks of some bruises, some places where the
skin was rucked up, and some swellings.

And then for my afternoon walks I have a garden,
larger than any artificial garden that I have read of
and far more attractive to me, — mile after mile of
embowered walks, such as no nobleman’s grounds can
boast, with animals running free and wild therein as
from the first, — varied with land and water prospect,
and, above all, so retired that it is extremely rare that I
meet a single wanderer in its mazes. No gardener is
seen therein, no gates nor [stc]. You may wander away
to solitary bowers and brooks and hills.

The ripple marks on the sandy bottom of Flint’s
Pond, where the rushes grow, feel hard to the feet of

1850] THE ADVANTAGES OF A FIRE 39

the wader, though the sand is really soft, — made firm
perchance by the weight of the water.1

The rushes over the water are white with the exuviae, the
skeletons, of insects, — like blossoms, — which have de¬
posited their eggs on their tops. The skeletons looked like
those of shad-flies, though some living insects were not.

I have seen crimson-colored eggs painting the leaves
of the black birch quite beautifully.

And now the ascending sun has contracted the
shadow of the solitary tree, and they are compelled to
seek the neighboring wood for shelter.

June 21. The flowers of the white pine are now in
their prime, but I see none of their pollen on the pond.

This piece of rural pantomime, this bucolic, is enacted
before me every day. Far over the hills on that fair
hillside, I look into the pastoral age.

But these are only the disadvantages of a fire. It is
without doubt an advantage on the whole. It sweeps
and ventilates the forest floor, and makes it clear and
clean. It is nature’s besom. By destroying the punier
underwood it gives prominence to the larger and sturdier
trees, and makes a wood in which you can go and come.
I have often remarked with how much more comfort
and pleasure I could walk in woods through which a fire
had run the previous year. It will clean the forest floor
like a broom perfectly smooth and clear, — no twigs
1 [ Walden , p. 216; Riv. 305.]

40

JOURNAL

[1850

left to crackle underfoot, the dead and rotten wood re¬
moved, — and thus in the course of two or three years
new huckleberry fields are created for the town, — for
birds and men.

When the lightning bums the forest its Director makes
no apology to man, and I was but His agent. Perhaps
we owe to this accident partly some of the noblest
natural parks. It is inspiriting to walk amid the fresh
green sprouts of grass and shrubbery pushing upward
through the charred surface with more vigorous growth.

Wherever a man goes men will pursue and paw him
with their dirty institutions.1

Sometimes an arrowhead is found with the mouldering
shaft still attached. ( Vide Charles Hubbard.) A little
boy from Compton, R. I., told me that his father found
an arrowhead sticking in a dead tree and nearly buried
in it. Where is the hand that drew that bow ? The arrow
shot by the Indian is still found occasionally, sticking
in the trees of our forest.

It is astonishing how much information is to be got
out of very unpromising witnesses. A wise man will
avail himself of the observation of all. Every boy and
simpleton has been an observer in some field, — so
many more senses they are, differently located. Will
inquire of eyes what they have seen, of ears what they
have heard, of hands what they have done, of feet where
they have been.

July 16. I have not yet been able to collect half a
1 [ Walden , p. 190; Riv. 268.]

WALKING BY NIGHT

41

1850]

thimbleful of the pollen of the pine on Walden, abundant
as it was last summer.

There is in our yard a little pitch pine four or five
years old and not much more than a foot high, with small
cones on it but no male flowers; and yet I do not know
of another pitch pine tree within half a mile.

Many men walk by day; few walk by night. It is a
very different season. Instead of the sun, there are
the moon and stars; instead of the wood thrush, there
is the whip-poor-will; instead of butterflies, fireflies,
winged sparks of fire! who would have believed it?
What kind of life and cool deliberation dwells in a spark
of fire in dewy abodes? Every man carries fire in his
eye, or in his blood, or in his brain. Instead of sing¬
ing birds, the croaking of frogs and the intenser dream
of crickets. The potatoes stand up straight, the corn
grows, the bushes loom, and, in a moonlight night, the
shadows of rocks and trees and bushes and hills are more
conspicuous than the objects themselves. The slightest
inequalities in the ground are revealed by the shadows ;
what the feet find comparatively smooth appears rough
and diversified to the eye. The smallest recesses in the
rocks are dim and cavernous; the ferns in the wood
appear to be of tropical size; the pools seen through the
leaves become as full of light as the sky. “ The light of
day takes refuge in their bosom,” as the Purana says of
the ocean. The woods are heavy and dark. Nature
slumbers. The rocks retain the warmth of the sun which
they have absorbed all night.1

1 [. Excursions , pp. 326-328; Riv. 401-403.]

JOURNAL

[1850

The names of those who bought these fields of the red
men, the wild men of the woods, are Buttrick, Davis, Bar¬
rett, Bulkley, etc., etc. ( Vide History.) Here and there
still you will find a man with Indian blood in his veins,
an eccentric farmer descended from an Indian chief; or
you will see a solitary pure-blooded Indian, looking as
wild as ever among the pines, one of the last of the Massa¬
chusetts tribes, stepping into a railroad car with his gun.

Still here and there an Indian squaw with her dog,
her only companion, lives in some lone house, insulted
by school-children, making baskets and picking berries
her employment. You will meet her on the highway,
with few children or none, with melancholy face, history,
destiny; stepping after her race; who had stayed to tuck
them up in their long sleep. For whom berries conde¬
scend to grow. I have not seen one on the Musketaquid
for many a year, and some who came up in their canoes
and camped on its banks a dozen years ago had to ask
me where it came from. A lone Indian woman without
children, accompanied by her dog, wearing the shroud
of her race, performing the last offices for her departed
race. Not yet absorbed into the elements again; a
daughter of the soil; one of the nobility of the land. The
white man an imported weed, — burdock and mullein,
which displace the ground-nut.

As a proof that oysters do not move, I have been
told by a Long Island oysterman that they are found
in large clusters surrounding the parent oyster in the
position in which they must have grown, the young being
several years old.

1850] THE MARQUIS OF OSSOLI 43

I find the actual to be far less real to me than the
imagined. Why this singular prominence and impor¬
tance is given to the former, I do not know. In propor¬
tion as that which possesses my thoughts is removed
from the actual, it impresses me. I have never met with
anything so truly visionary and accidental as some
actual events. They have affected me less than my
dreams. Whatever actually happens to a man is wonder¬
fully trivial and insignificant, — even to death itself, I
imagine. He complains of the fates who drown him,
that they do not touch him. They do not deal directly
with him. I have in my pocket a button which I ripped
off the coat of the Marquis of Ossoli 1 on the seashore
the other day. Held up, it intercepts the light and casts
a shadow, — an actual button so called, — and yet all
the life it is connected with is less substantial to me than
my faintest dreams. This stream of events which we
consent to call actual, and that other mightier stream
which alone carries us with it, — what makes the dif¬
ference ? On the one our bodies float, and we have sym¬
pathy with it through them; on the other, our spirits.
We are ever dying to one world and being born into
another, and possibly no man knows whether he is at
any time dead in the sense in which he affirms that
phenomenon of another, or not. Our thoughts are the
epochs of our life: all else is but as a journal of the
winds that blew while we were here.2

1 [In July, 1850, Thoreau went to Fire Island with other friends
of Margaret Fuller to search for her remains. See Cape Cod, pp. 107,
108; Riv. 126, 127. See also next page.]

2 [Part of draft of a letter to H. G. O. Blake, dated Aug. 9, 1850.
Other parts follow. Familiar Letters .]

44

JOURNAL

[1850

I do not think much of the actual. It is something
which we have long since done with. It is a sort of vomit
in which the unclean love to wallow.

There was nothing at all remarkable about them.
They were simply some bones lying on the beach. They
would not detain a walker there more than so much sea¬
weed. I should think that the fates would not take the
trouble to show me any bones again, I so slightly appre¬
ciate the favor.1

Do a little more of that work which you have some¬
time confessed to be good, which you feel that society and
your justest judge rightly demands of you. Do what you
reprove yourself for not doing. Know that you are
neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with yourself without
reason. Let me say to you and to myself in one breath,
Cultivate the tree which you have found to bear fruit in
your soil. Regard not your past failures nor successes.
All the past is equally a failure and a success; it is a
success in as much as it offers you the present opportu¬
nity. Have you not a pretty good thinking faculty, worth
more than the rarest gold watch ? Can you not pass a
judgment on something ? Does not the stream still rise
to its fountain-head in you ? Go to the devil and come
back again. Dispose of evil. Get punished once for all.
Die, if you can. Depart. Exchange your salvation for
a glass of water. If you know of any risk to run, run it.
If you don’t know of any, enjoy confidence. Do not
trouble yourself to be religious; you will never get a
thank-you for it. If you can drive a nail and have any
nails to drive, drive them. If you have any experiments

1 [See Cape Cod , p. 108; Riv. 127. See also p. 80 of this volume.]

1850] FRESH WATER IN SAND-BARS 45

you would like to try, try them ; now ’s your chance. Do
not entertain doubts, if they are not agreeable to you.
Send them to the tavern. Do not eat unless you are
hungry; there’s no need of it. Do not read the news¬
papers. Improve every opportunity to be melancholy.
Be as melancholy as you can be, and note the result.
Rejoice with fate. As for health, consider yourself well,
and mind your business. Who knows but you are dead
already? Do not stop to be scared yet; there are more
terrible things to come, and ever to come. Men die of
fright and live of confidence. Be not simply obedient
like the vegetables; set up your own Ebenezer. Of
man’s “ disobedience and the fruit,” etc. Do not engage
to find things as you think they are. Do what nobody
can do for you. Omit to do everything else.1

According to Lieutenant Davis, the forms, extent, and
distribution of sand-bars and banks are principally deter¬
mined by tides, not by winds and waves.2 On sand-bars
recently elevated above the level of the ocean, fresh
water is obtained by digging a foot or two. It is very
common for wells near the shore to rise and fall with the
tide. It is an interesting fact that the low sand-bars in
the midst of the ocean, even those which are laid bare
only at low tide, are reservoirs of fresh water at which
the thirsty mariner can supply himself. Perchance, like
huge sponges, they hold the rain and dew which falls on
them, and which, by capillary attraction, is prevented
from mingling with the surrounding brine.8

1 [Familiar Letters , Aug. 9, 1850.] 2 [Cape Cod, p. 155; Riv. 185.]

8 [Cape Cod, p. 225; Riv. 271.]

46

JOURNAL

[1850

It is not easy to make our lives respectable to our¬
selves by any course of activity. We have repeatedly to
withdraw ourselves into our shells of thought like the
tortoise, somewhat helplessly; and yet there is even
more than philosophy in that. I do not love to entertain
doubts and questions.

I am sure that my acquaintances mistake me. I am
not the man they take me for. On a little nearer view
they would find me out. They ask my advice on high
matters, but they do not even know how poorly on’t I
am for hats and shoes. I have hardly a shift. Just
as shabby as I am in my outward apparel, — aye, and
more lamentably shabby, for nakedness is not so bad
a condition after all, — am I in my inward apparel. If
I should turn myself inside out, my rags and meanness
would appear. I am something to him that made me,
undoubtedly, but not much to any other that he has
made.1 All I can say is that I live and breathe and have
my thoughts.

What is peculiar in the life of a man consists not in his
obedience, but his opposition, to his instincts. In one
direction or another he strives to live a supernatural
life.

Would it not be worth the while to discover nature in
Milton ? 2 Be native to the universe. I, too, love Con¬
cord best, but I am glad when I discover, in oceans and
wildernesses far away, the materials out of which a
million Concords can be made, — indeed, unless I dis¬
cover them, I am lost myself, — that there too I am at

1 [Familiar Letters , Aug. 9, 1850.]

2 [Blake was at the time living in Milton, Mass.]

47

1850] TOBACCO LEGISLATION

home. Nature is as far from me as God, and sometimes
I have thought to go West after her. Though the city is
no more attractive to me than ever, yet I see less differ¬
ence between a city and some dismallest swamp than
formerly. It is a swamp too dismal and dreary, however,
for me. I would as lief find a few owls and frogs and
mosquitoes less. I prefer even a more cultivated place,
free from miasma and crocodiles, and I will take my
choice.1

From time to time I overlook the promised land, but I
do not feel that I am travelling toward it. The moment
I begin to look there, men and institutions get out of
the way that I may see. I see nothing permanent in
the society around me, and am not quite committed to
any of its ways.

The heaven-born Numa, or Lycurgus, or Solon,
gravely makes laws to regulate the exportation of to¬
bacco. Will a divine legislator legislate for slaves, or to
regulate the exportation of tobacco ? What shall a State
say for itself at the last day, in which this is a principal
production ?

What have grave, not to say divine, legislators —
Numas, Lycurguses, Solons — to do with the exporta¬
tion or the importation of tobacco. There was a man
appealed to me the other day, “ Can you give me a chaw
of tobacco ? ” I legislated for him. Suppose you were
to submit the question to any son of God , in what State
would you get it again ? 2

1 [Familiar Letters , Aug. 9, 1850.]

2 [Cape Cod, and MiscellanieSy p. 478; Misc.y Riv. 282, 283.]

48

JOURNAL

[1850

Do not waste any reverence on my attitude. I man¬
age to sit up where I have dropped. Except as you
reverence the evil one, — or rather the evil myriad.
As for missing friends, — fortunate perhaps is he who
has any to miss, whose place a thought will not supply.
I have an ideal friend in whose place actual persons
sometimes stand for a season. The last I may often
miss, but the first I recover when I am myself again.
What if we do miss one another? have we not agreed
upon a rendezvous? While each travels his own way
through the wood with serene and inexpressible joy,
though it be on his hands and knees over the rocks and
fallen trees, he cannot but be on the right way; there
is no wrong way to him. I have found myself as well
off when I have fallen into a quagmire, as in an arm¬
chair in the most hospitable house. The prospect was
pretty much the same. Without anxiety let us wander
on, admiring whatever beauty the woods exhibit.1

Do you know on what bushes a little peace, faith,
and contentment grow? Go a-berrying early and late
after them.2 Miss our friends ! It is not easy to get rid
of them. We shall miss our bodies directly.

As to conforming outwardly, and living your own
life inwardly, I have not a very high opinion of that
course. Do not let your right hand know what your left
hand does in that line of business. I have no doubt it
will prove a failure.8

1 [Familiar Letters , Aug. 9, 1850.]

2 [Charming, p. 78.]

* [Familiar Letters, Aug. 9, 1850.]

49

1850] A DRUNKEN DUTCHMAN

The wind through the blind just now sounded like
the baying of a distant hound, — somewhat plaintive
and melodious.

The railroad cuts make cliffs for swallows.

Getting into Patchogue late one night in an oyster-
boat, there was a drunken Dutchman aboard whose
wit reminded me of Shakespeare. When we came to
leave the beach, our boat was aground, and we were
detained three hours waiting for the tide. In the mean¬
while two of the fishermen took an extra dram at the
beach house. Then they stretched themselves on the
seaweed by the shore in the sun to sleep off the effects
of their debauch. One was an inconceivably broad¬
faced young Dutchman, — but oh ! of such a peculiar
breadth and heavy look, I should not know whether
to call it more ridiculous or sublime. You would say
that he had humbled himself so much that he was
beginning to be exalted. An indescribable mynheerish
stupidity. I was less disgusted by their filthiness and
vulgarity, because I was compelled to look on them as
animals, as swine in their sty. For the whole voyage
they lay flat on their backs on the bottom of the boat,
in the bilge-water and wet with each bailing, half in¬
sensible and wallowing in their vomit. But ever and
anon, when aroused by the rude kicks or curses of the
skipper, the Dutchman, who never lost his wit nor
equanimity, though snoring and rolling in the vomit
produced by his debauch, blurted forth some happy
repartee like an illuminated swine. It was the earthiest,
slimiest wit I ever heard. The countenance was one of

50

JOURNAL

[1850

a million. It was unmistakable Dutch. In the midst
of a million faces of other races it could not be mistaken.
It told of Amsterdam. I kept racking my brains to
conceive how he could have been born in America, how
lonely he must feel, what he did for fellowship. When
we were groping up the narrow creek of Patchogue at
ten o’clock at night, keeping our boat off, now from
this bank, now from that, with a pole, the two inebriates
roused themselves betimes. For in spite of their low
estate they seemed to have all their wits as much about
them as ever, aye, and all the self-respect they ever had.
And the Dutchman gave wise directions to the steerer,
which were not heeded. Suddenly rousing himself up
where the sharpest-eyed might be bewildered in the
darkness, he leaned over the side of the boat and pointed
straight down into the creek, averring that that identi¬
cal hole was a first-rate place for eels. And again he
roused himself at the right time and declared what
luck he had once had with his pots (not his cups) in
another place, which we were floating over in the dark.
At last he suddenly stepped on to another boat which
was moored to the shore, with a divine ease and sure¬
ness, saying, “ Well, good-night, take care of yourselves,
I can’t be with you any longer.” He was one of the few
remarkable men whom I have met. I have been im¬
pressed by one or two men in their cups. There was
really a divinity stirred within them, so that in their
case I have reverenced the drunken, as savages the in¬
sane, man. So stupid that he could never be intoxicated.
When I said, “You have had a hard time of it to-day,”
he answered with indescribable good humor out of the

LEGS AS COMPASSES

51

1850]

very midst of his debauch, with watery eyes, “Well, it
does n’t happen every day.” It was happening then.1
He had taken me aboard on his back, the boat lying a
rod from the shore, before I knew his condition. In the
darkness our skipper steered with a pole on the bottom,
for an oysterman knows the bottom of his bay as well
as the shores, and can tell where he is by the soundings.2

There was a glorious lurid sunset to-night, accom¬
panied with many sombre clouds, and when I looked
into the west with my head turned, the grass had the
same fresh green, and the distant herbage and foliage
in the horizon the same bark blue, and the clouds and
sky the same bright colors beautifully mingled and dis¬
solving into one another, that I have seen in pictures of
tropical landscapes and skies. Pale saffron skies with
faint fishes of rosy clouds dissolving in them. A blood¬
stained sky. I regretted that I had an impatient com¬
panion. What shall we make of the fact that you have
only to stand on your head a moment to be enchanted
with the beauty of the landscape ?

I met with a man on the beach who told me that
when he wanted to jump over a brook he held up one
leg a certain height, and then, if a line from his eye
through his toe touched the opposite bank, he knew
that he could jump it. I asked him how he knew when
he held his leg at the right angle, and he said he knew
the hitch very well. An Irishman told me that he held
up one leg and if he could bring his toe in a range with
his eye and the opposite bank he knew that he could
1 [Charming, pp. 36, 37.] 8 [See pp. 78, 79.]

52

JOURNAL

[1850

jump it. Why, I told him, I can blot out a star with my
toe, but I would not engage to jump the distance. It
then appeared that he knew when he had got his leg at
the right height by a certain hitch there was in it. I
suggested that he should connect his two ankles with a
string.1

I knew a clergyman who, when any person died, was
wont to speak of that portion of mankind who survived
as living monuments of God’s mercy. A negative kind
of life to live!

I can easily walk ten, fifteen, twenty, any number of
miles, commencing at my own door, without going by
any house, without crossing a road except where the fox
and the mink do. Concord is the oldest inland town
in New England, perhaps in the States, and the walker
is peculiarly favored here. There are square miles in
my vicinity which have no inhabitant. First along by
the river, and then the brook, and then the meadow and
the woodside. Such solitude! From a hundred hills
I can see civilization and abodes of man afar. These
farmers and their works are scarcely more obvious than
woodchucks.2

As I was going by with a creaking wheelbarrow, one
of my neighbors, who heard the music, ran out with his
grease-pot and brush and greased the wheels.

1 [An example of Thoreau’s practice work, — the same story told
in two forms. For its final form see Cape Cod, p. 88; Riv. 103, 104.]

2 [Excursions, p. 212; Riv. 260.]

MEADOW-HAY

53

1850]

That is a peculiar season when about the middle of
August the farmers are getting their meadow-hay. If
you sail up the river, you will see them in all meadows,
raking hay and loading it on to carts, great towering [ ?]
teams, under which the oxen stand like beetles, chewing
the cud, waiting for men to put the meadow on. With
the heaviest load they dash aside to crop some more
savory grass, — the half-broken steers.

There was reason enough for the first settler’s select¬
ing the elm out of all the trees of the forest with which
to ornament his villages. It is beautiful alike by sun-
fight and moonlight, and the most beautiful specimens
are not the largest. I have seen some only twenty-five
or thirty years old, more graceful and healthy, I think,
than any others. It is almost become a villageous tree,
— like martins and bluebirds.

The high blueberry has the wildest flavor of any of
the huckleberry tribe. It is a little mithridatic. It is
like eating a poisonous berry which your nature makes
harmless. I derive the same pleasure as if I were eat¬
ing dog-berries, nightshade, and wild parsnip with
impunity.

Man and his affairs, — Church and State and school,
trade and commerce and agriculture, — Politics, —
for that is the word for them all here to-day, — I am
pleased to see how little space it occupies in the land¬
scape. It is but a narrow field. That still narrower
highway yonder leads to it. I sometimes direct the
traveller 1 [Two pages missing.]

1 [. Excursions , pp. 212, 213; Riv. 260, 261.]

54

JOURNAL

[1850

And once again.

When I went a-maying.

And once or twice more
I had seen thee before.

For there grow the mayflower
( Epigcea repens)

And the mountain cranberry

And the screech owl strepens.

O whither dost thou go?

Which way dost thou flow ?

Thou art the way.

Thou art a road
Which Dante never trode.

Not many they be
Who enter therein.

Only the guests of the
Irishman Quin.1

There was a cross-eyed fellow used to help me sur¬
vey, — he was my stake-driver, — and all he said was,
at every stake he drove, “There, I shouldn’t like to
undertake to pull that up with my teeth.”

It sticks in my crop. That’s a good phrase. Many
things stick there.

The man of wild habits.

Partridges and rabbits.

Who has no cares
Only to set snares,

1 [Excursions, p. 215; Riv. 263.]

1850] THE OLD MARLBOROUGH ROAD 55

Who liv’st all alone.

Close to the bone.

And where life is sweetest
Constantly eatest.

Where they once dug for money.

But never found “ony.”

To market fares

With early apples and pears.

When the spring stirs my blood
With the instinct to travel,

I can get enough gravel
On the Old Marlborough Road.

If you’ll leave your abode
With your fancy unfurled.

You may go round the world
By the Old Marlborough Road.

Nobody repairs it.

For nobody wears it.

It is a living way.

As the Christians say.

What is it, what is it.

But a direction out there
And the bare possibility
Of going somewhere?

Great guide-boards of stone.

But travellers none.

It is worth going there to see
Where you might be.

56

JOURNAL

[1850

They ’re a great endeavor
To be something for ever.

They are a monument to somebody,
To some selectman
Who thought of the plan.

What king
Did the thing,

I am still wondering.

Cenotaphs of the towns
Named on their crowns;

Huge as Stonehenge;

Set up how or when.

By what selectmen ?

Gourgas or Lee,

Clark or Darby ?

Blank tablets of stone.

Where a traveller might groan.

And in one sentence
Grave all that is known;

Which another might read.

In his extreme need.

I know two or three
Sentences, i. e.>

That might there be.

Literature that might stand
All over the land.

Which a man might remember
Till after December,

And read again in the spring.

After the thawing.1
1 [Excursions, pp. 214-216; Riv. 263, 264.]

1850]

THE SURFACE OF WATER

57

Old meeting-house bell,

I love thy music well.

It peals through the air.

Sweetly full and fair.

As in the early times.

When I listened to its chimes.

I walk over the hills, to compare great things with
small , as through a gallery of pictures, ever and anon
looking through a gap in the wood, as through the frame
of a picture, to a more distant wood or hillside, painted
with several more coats of air. It is a cheap but pleasant
effect. To a landscape in picture, glassed with air.

What is a horizon without mountains ?

A field of water betrays the spirit that is in the air. It
has new life and motion. It is intermediate between
land and sky. On land, only the grass and trees wave,
but the water itself is rippled by the wind. I see the
breeze dash across it in streaks and flakes of light. It is
somewhat singular that we should look down on the
surface of water. We shall look down on the surface of
air next, and mark where a still subtler spirit sweeps
over it.1

Without inlet it lies.

Without outlet it flows.

From and to the skies
It comes and it goes.

I am its source.

And my life is its course.

1 [Walden, pp. 209, 210; Riv. 296.]

58 JOURNAL [1850

I am its stony shore

And the breeze that passes o’er.1

[Two thirds of a page missing.]

All that the money-digger had ever found was a pine-
tree shilling, once as he was dunging out. He was paid
much more for dunging out, but he valued more the
money which he found. The boy thinks most of the
cent he found, not the cent he earned; for it suggests
to him that he may find a great deal more, but he knows
that he can’t earn much , and perhaps did not deserve
that.

[Two pages missing.]

Among the worst of men that ever lived.

However, we did seriously attend,

A little space we let our thoughts ascend.

Experienced our religion and confessed

’T was good for us to be there, — be anywhere. •

Then to a heap of apples we addressed.

And cleared a five-rail fence with hand on the topmost
rider sine care.

Then our Icarian thoughts returned to ground.

And we went on to heaven the long way round.

What ’s the railroad to me ?

I never go to see
Where it ends.

It fills a few hollows,

And makes banks for the swallows;

1 [Walden, p. 215; Riv. 303.]

1850]

TALL AMBROSIA

59

It sets the sand a-flowing.

And blackberries a-growing.1

•

Aug. 81. TALL AMBROSIA

Among the signs of autumn I perceive

The Roman wormwood (called by learned men

Ambrosia elatior, food for gods.

For by impartial science the humblest weed
Is as well named as is the proudest flower)

Sprinkles its yellow dust over my shoes

As I brush through the now neglected garden.

We trample under foot the food of gods*

And spill their nectar in each drop of dew.

My honest shoes, fast friends that never stray
Far from my couch, thus powdered, countrified.
Bearing many a mile the marks of their adventure.
At the post-house disgrace the Gallic gloss
Of those well-dressed ones who no morning dew
Nor Roman wormwood ever have gone through.
Who never walk, but are transported rather.

For what old crime of theirs I do not gather.

The gray blueberry bushes, venerable as oaks, —
why is not their fruit poisonous? Bilberry called V ac¬
tinium corymbosum ; some say amoenum , or blue bil¬
berry, and V actinium disomorphum Mx., black bil¬
berry. Its fruit hangs on into September, but loses its
wild and sprightly taste.

Th’ ambrosia of the Gods ’s a weed on earth.
Their nectar is the morning dew which on-
Ly our shoes taste, for they are simple folks.

1 [i Walden , pp. 135, 136; Riv. 192.]

60

JOURNAL

[Aug. 31

*T is very fit the ambrosia of the gods

Should be a weed on earth, as nectar is

The morning dew which our shoes brush aside ;

For the gods are simple folks, and we should pine upon
their humble fare.

The purple flowers of the humble trichostema mingled
with the wormwood, smelling like it; and the spring-
scented, dandelion-scented primrose, yellow primrose.
The swamp-pink {Azalea viscosa), its now withered pis¬
tils standing out.

The odoriferous sassafras, with its delicate green
stem, its three-lobed leaf, tempting the traveller to
bruise it, it sheds so rare a perfume on him, equal to all
the spices of the East. Then its rare-tasting root bark,
like nothing else, which I used to dig. The first navi¬
gators freighted their ships with it and deemed it worth
its weight in gold.

The alder-leaved clethra {Clethra ahtifolia), sweet¬
smelling queen of the swamp; its long white racemes.

We are most apt to remember and cherish the flowers
which appear earliest in the spring. I look with equal
affection on those which are the latest to bloom in the fall.

The choke-berry ( Pyrus arbutijolia).

The beautiful white waxen berries of the cornel, either
Cornus alba or panicvlata , white-berried or panicled,
beautiful both when full of fruit and when its cymes
are naked; delicate red cymes or stems of berries;
spreading its little fairy fingers to the skies, its little
palms; fairy palms they might be called.

One of the viburnums, Lentago or pyrijolium or

THE WAYS OF COWS

61

1850]

nud/um , with its poisonous-looking fruit in cymes, first
greenish-white, then red, then purple, or all at once.

The imp-eyed, red, velvety-looking berry of the
swamps.1

The spotted polygonum (Polygonum Persicaria), seen
in low lands amid the potatoes now, wild prince’ s-
feather ( ?), slight flower that does not forget to grace
the autumn.

The late whortleberry — dangleberry — that ripens
now that other huckleberries and blueberries are shriv¬
elled and spoiling, September 1st; dangle down two
or three inches; can rarely find many. They have a
more transparent look, large, blue, long-stemmed,
dangling, fruit of the swamp concealed.

I detect the pennyroyal which my feet have bruised.

Butter-and-eggs still hold out to bloom.

I notice that cows never walk abreast, but in single
file commonly, making a narrow cow-path, or the herd
walks in an irregular and loose wedge. They retain
still the habit of all the deer tribe, acquired when the
earth was all covered with forest, of travelling from
necessity in narrow paths in the woods.

At sundown a herd of cows, returning homeward from
pasture over a sandy knoll, pause to paw the sand and
challenge the representatives of another herd, raising a
cloud of dust between the beholder and the setting sun.
And then the herd boys rush to mingle in the fray and
separate the combatants, two cows with horns inter¬
locked, the one pushing the other down the bank.

1 Wild holly?

JOURNAL

62

[1850

My grandmother called her cow home at night from
the pasture over the hill, by thumping on a mortar out
of which the cow was accustomed to eat salt.

At Nagog I saw a hundred bushels of huckleberries
in one field.

The Roman wormwood, pigweed, a stout, coarse red-
topped (?) weed ( Amaranthus hybridus ), and spotted
polygonum; these are the lusty growing plants now,
September 2d.

Tall, slender, minute white-flowered weed in gardens,
annual fleabane (Erigeron Canadensis).

One of my neighbors, of whom I borrowed a horse,
cart, and harness to-day, which last was in a singularly
dilapidated condition, considering that he is a wealthy
farmer, did not know but I would make a book about it.

As I was stalking over the surface of this planet in the
dark to-night, I started a plover resting on the ground
and heard him go off with whistling wings.

My friends wonder that I love to walk alone in soli¬
tary fields and woods by night. Sometimes in my loneli¬
est and wildest midnight walk I hear the sound of the
whistle and the rattle of the cars, where perchance some
of those very friends are being whirled by night over, as
they think, a well-known, safe, and public road. I see
that men do not make or choose their own paths, whether
they are railroads or trackless through the wilds, but
what the powers permit each one enjoys. My solitary

FLOCKS OF BIRDS

1850]

course has the same sanction that the Fitchburg Railroad
has. If they have a charter from Massachusetts and —
what is of much more importance — from Heaven, to
travel the course and in the fashion they do, I have a
charter, though it be from Heaven alone, to travel the
course I do, — to take the necessary lands and pay the
damages. It is by the grace of God in both cases.

Now, about the first of September, you will see flocks
of small birds forming compact and distinct masses, as
if they were not only animated by one spirit but actu¬
ally held together by some invisible fluid or film, and
will hear the sound of their wings rippling or fanning
the air as they flow through it, flying, the whole mass,
ricochet like a single bird, — or as they flow over the
fence. Their mind must operate faster than man’s, in
proportion as their bodies do.

What a generation this is ! It travels with some brains
in its hat, with a couple of spare cigars on top of them.
It carries a heart in its breast, covered by a lozenge in
its waistcoat pocket.

John Garfield brought me this morning (September
6th) a young great heron (Ardea Herodias), which he
shot this morning on a pine tree on the North Branch.
It measured four feet, nine inches, from bill to toe and
six feet in alar extent, and belongs to a different race
from myself and Mr. Frost. I am glad to recognize
him for a native of America, — why not an American
citizen ?

64

JOURNAL

[Sept.

In the twilight, when you can only see the outlines of
the trees in the horizon, the elm-tops indicate where the
houses are. I ha’ve looked afar over fields and even over
distant woods and distinguished the conspicuous grace¬
ful, sheaf-like head of an elm which shadowed some
farmhouse. From the northwest (?) part of Sudbury
you can see an elm on the Boston road, on the hilltop in
the horizon in Wayland, five or six miles distant. The
elm is a tree which can be distinguished farther off per¬
haps than any other. The wheelwright still makes his
hubs of it, his spokes of white oak, his fellies of yellow
oak, which does not crack on the comers. In England,
’t is said, they use the ash for fellies.

There is a little grove in a swampy place in Conantum
where some rare things grow, — several bass trees, two
kinds of ash, sassafras, maidenhair fern, the white-
berried plant (ivory?), etc., etc., and the sweet vibur¬
num ( ?) in the hedge near by.

This will be called the wet year of 1850. The river
is as high now, September 9th, as in the spring, and
hence the prospects and the reflections seen from the
village are something novel.

Roman wormwood, pigweed, amaranth, polygonum,
and one or two coarse kinds of grass reign now in the
cultivated fields.

Though the potatoes have man with all his imple¬
ments on their side, these rowdy and rampant weeds
completely bury them, between the last hoeing and
the digging. The potatoes hardly succeed with the
utmost care : these weeds only ask to be let alone a little

65

1850] UNCLE CHARLES DUNBAR

while. I judge that they have not got the rot. I sym¬
pathize with all this luxuriant growth of weeds. Such
is the year. The weeds grow as if in sport and frolic.

You might say green as green-briar.

I do not know whether the practice of putting indigo-
weed about horses’ tackling to keep off flies is well
founded, but I hope it is, for I have been pleased to no¬
tice that wherever I have occasion to tie a horse I am
sure to find indigo-weed not far off, and therefore this,
which is so universally dispersed, would be the fittest
weed for this purpose.

The thistle is now in bloom, which every child is eager
to clutch once, — just a child’s handful.

The prunella, self-heal, small purplish-flowered
plant of low grounds.

Charles 1 grew up to be a remarkably eccentric man.
He was of large frame, athletic, and celebrated for his
feats of strength. His lungs were proportionally strong.
There was a man who heard him named once, and
asked if it was the same Charles Dunbar whom he
remembered when he was a little boy walking on the
coast of Maine. A man came down to the shore and
hailed a vessel that was sailing by. He should never
forget that man’s name.

It was well grassed, and delicate flowers grew in the
middle of the road.

1 [Charles Dunbar was Thoreau’s uncle. See Sanborn, pp. 21-23,
92, 93; also Journal , vol. iv, Jan. 1, 1853, and vol. viii, Apr. 3, 1856.]

66 JOURNAL [Sept.

I saw a delicate flower had grown up two feet
high

Between the horses’ path and the wheel-track.
Which Dakin’s and Maynard’s wagons had
Passed over many a time.

An inch more to right or left had sealed its fate.

Or an inch higher. And yet it lived and flourished
As much as if it had a thousand acres
Of untrodden space around it, and never
Knew the danger it incurred.

It did not borrow trouble nor invite an

Evil fate by apprehending it.1

For though the distant market-wagon

Every other day inevitably rolled

This way, it just as inevitably rolled

In those ruts. And the same

Charioteer who steered the flower

Upward guided the horse and cart aside from it.

There were other flowers which you would say

Incurred less danger, grew more out of the way,

Which no cart rattled near, no walker daily passed,

But at length one rambling deviously —

For no rut restrained — plucked them.

And then it appeared that they stood
Directly in his way, though he had come
From farther than the market-wagon.

And then it appeared that this brave flower which
grew between the wheel and horse did actually stand
farther out of the way than that which stood in the wide
prairie where the man of science plucked it.

1 [Channing, p. 293 (as prose).]

A BEAUTIFUL HEIFER

67

1850]

To-day I climbed a handsome rounded hill
Covered with hickory trees, wishing to see
The country from its top, for low hills
Show unexpected prospects. I looked
Many miles over a woody lowland
Toward Marlborough, Framingham, and Sudbury;
And as I sat amid the hickory trees
And the young sumachs, enjoying the prospect, a
neat herd of cows approached, of unusually fair pro¬
portions and smooth, clean skins, evidently petted by
their owner, who must have carefully selected them.
One more confiding heifer, the fairest of the herd, did
by degrees approach as if to take some morsel from
our hands, while our hearts leaped to our mouths with
expectation and delight. She by degrees drew near
with her fair limbs progressive, making pretense of
browsing; nearer and nearer, till there was wafted
toward us the bovine fragrance, — cream of all the
dairies that ever were or will be, — and then she raised
her gentle muzzle toward us, and snuffed an honest
recognition within hand’s reach. I saw ’t was possible
for his herd to inspire with love the herdsman. She
was as delicately featured as a hind. Her hide was
mingled white and fawn-color, and on her muzzle’s
tip there was a white spot not bigger than a daisy, and
on her side toward me the map of Asia plain to see.

Farewell, dear heifer! Though thou forgettest me,
my prayer to heaven shall be that thou may’st not for¬
get thyself. There was a whole bucolic in her snuff.
I saw her name was Sumach. And by the kindred
spots I knew her mother, more sedate and matronly.

68

JOURNAL

[Sept

with full-grown bag; and on her sides was Asia, great
and small, the plains of Tartary, even to the pole,
while on her daughter it was Asia Minor. She not dis¬
posed to wanton with the herdsman.

And as I walked, she followed me, and took an ap¬
ple from my hand, and seemed to care more for the
hand than apple. So innocent a face as I have rarely
seen on any creature, and I have looked in face pf many
heifers. And as she took the apple from my hand, I
caught the apple of her eye. She smelled as sweet as
the clethra blossom. There was no sinister expression.
And for horns, though she had them, they were so well
disposed in the right place, bent neither up nor down,
I do not now remember she had any. No horn was held
toward me.1

Sept. 11. Wednesday. The river higher than I ever
knew it at this season, as high as in the spring.

Yesterday, September 14, walked to White Pond in
Stow, on the Marlborough road, having passed one pond
called sometimes Pratt’s Pond, sometimes Bottomless
Pond, in Sudbury. Saw afterward another pond beyond
Willis’s also called Bottomless Pond, in a thick swamp.
To name two ponds bottomless when both of them
have a bottom! Verily men choose darkness rather
than light.2

The farmers are now cutting — topping — their
com, gathering their early fruit, raking their cran¬
berries, digging their potatoes, etc.

1 [Charming, pp. 76, 77; Sanborn, pp. 258, 259.]

2 [See Walden, p. 315; Riv. 441.]

1850] WATER THE ONLY DRINK 69

Everything has its use, and man seeks sedulously for
the best article for each use. The watchmaker finds the
oil of the porpoise’s jaw the best for oiling his watches.
Man has a million eyes, and the race knows infinitely
more than the individual. Consent to be wise through
your race.

Autumnal mornings, when the feet of countless spar¬
rows are heard like rain-drops on the roof by the boy
who sleeps in the garret.

Villages with a single long street lined with trees, so
straight and wide that you can see a chicken run across
it a mile off.

Sept. 19. The gerardia, yellow trumpet-like flower.
Veiny-leaved hawkweed (leaves handsome, radical
excepting one or two; know them well) (Hieracium
venosum), flower like a dandelion. Canada snapdragon,
small pea-like blue flower in the wood-paths, (. Antirrhi¬
num Canadense). Pine-weed, thickly branched low
weed with red seed-vessels, in wood-paths and fields,
(Sarothra gentianoides). Cucumber-root ( Medeola ).
Tree-primrose. Red-stemmed cornel. The very minute
flower which grows now in the middle of the Marl¬
borough road.

I am glad to have drunk water so long, as I prefer the
natural sky to an opium-eater’s heaven, — would keep
sober always, and lead a sane life not indebted to stimu¬
lants. Whatever my practice may be, I believe that it

70

JOURNAL

[Sept.

is the only drink for a wise man, and only the foolish
habitually use any other. Think of dashing the hopes
of a morning with a cup of coffee, or of an evening with
a dish of tea! Wine is not a noble liquor, except when
it is confined to the pores of the grape. Even music is
wont to be intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes
destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England
and America.1

I have seen where the rain dripped from the trees on
a sand-bank on the Marlborough road, that each little
pebble which had protected the sand made the summit
of a sort of basaltic column of sand, — a phenomenon
which looked as if it might be repeated on a larger scale
in nature.

The goldenrods and asters impress me not like indi¬
viduals but great families covering a thousand hills
and having a season to themselves.

The indigo-weed turns black when dry, and I have
been interested to find in each of its humble seed-ves¬
sels a worm.

The Deep Cut is sometimes excited to productiveness
by a rain in midsummer. It impresses me somewhat
as if it were a cave, with all its stalactites turned wrong
side outward. Workers in bronze should come here for
their patterns.

Those were carrots which I saw naturalized in
Wheeler’s field. It was four or five years since he
planted there.

To-day I saw a sunflower in the woods.

It is pleasant to see the Viola pedata blossoming again
1 [Walden, p. 240; Riv. 338.]

1850] ON THE RIVER 71

now, in September, with a beauty somewhat serener than
that of these yellow flowers.

The trees on the bank of the river have white furrows
worn about them, marking the height of the freshets,
at what levels the water has stood.

Water is so much more fine and sensitive an element
than earth. A single boatman passing up or down
unavoidably shakes the whole of a wide river, and dis¬
turbs its every reflection. The air is an element which
our voices shake still further than our oars the water.

The red maples on the river, standing far in the wa¬
ter when the banks are overflown and touched by the
earliest frosts, are memorable features in the scenery of
the stream at this season.

Now you can scent the ripe grapes far off on the banks
as you row along. Their fragrance is finer than their
flavor.

My companion said he would drink when the boat got
under the bridge, because the water would be cooler in
the shade, though the stream quickly passes through the
piers from shade to sun again. It is something beauti¬
ful, the act of drinking, the stooping to imbibe some of
this widespread element, in obedience to instinct, without
whim. We do not so simply drink in other influences.

It is pleasant to have been to a place by the way a
river went.

The forms of trees and groves change with every
stroke of the oar.

It seems hardly worth the while to risk the dangers of
the sea between Leghorn and New York for the sake
of a cargo of juniper berries and bitter almonds.

72

JOURNAL

[Sept.

Oh, if I could be intoxicated on air and water! 1 on
hope and memory! and always see the maples standing
red in the midst of the waters on the meadow!

Those have met with losses, who have lost their chil¬
dren. I saw the widow this morning whose son was
drowned.

That I might never be blind to the beauty of the land¬
scape ! To hear music without any vibrating cord !

A family in which there was singing in the morning.
To hear a neighbor singing! All other speech sounds
thereafter like profanity. A man cannot sing falsehood
or cowardice; he must sing truth and heroism to attune
his voice to some instrument. It would be noblest to
sing with the wind. I have seen a man making himself
a viol, patiently and fondly paring the thin wood and
shaping it, and when I considered the end of the work
he was ennobled in my eyes. He was building himself a
ship in which to sail to new worlds. I am much indebted
to my neighbor who will now and then in the intervals
of his work draw forth a few strains from his accordion.
Though he is but a learner, I find when his strains cease
that I have been elevated.

The question is not whether you drink, but what
liquor.

Plucked a wild rose the 9th of October on Fair Haven
Hill.

Butter-and-eggs, which blossomed several months
ago, still freshly [in] bloom (October 11th).

He knew what shrubs were best for withes.

1 \Walden, p. 240; Riv. 338.]

73

1850] THE CANADIAN EXCURSION

This is a remarkable year. Huckleberries are still
quite abundant and fresh on Conantum. There have
been more berries than pickers or even worms. (Octo¬
ber 9 th.)

I am always exhilarated, as were the early voyagers,
by the sight of sassafras ( Laurus Sassafras). The green
leaves bruised have the fragrance of lemons and a thou¬
sand spices. To the same order belong cinnamon,
cassia, camphor.

Hickory is said to be an Indian name. (Nuttall’s
continuation of Michaux.)

The seed vessel of the sweet-briar is a very beautiful
glossy elliptical fruit. What with the fragrance of its
leaves, its blossom, and its fruit, it is thrice crowned.

I observed to-day (October 17th) the small blueberry
bushes by the path-side, now blood-red, full of white
blossoms as in the spring, the blossoms of spring con¬
trasting strangely with the leaves of autumn. The for¬
mer seemed to have expanded from sympathy with the
maturity of the leaves.

Walter Colton in his “ California ” 1 says, “Age is no
certain evidence of merit, since folly runs to seed as fast
as wisdom.”

The imagination never forgives an insult.

Left Concord, Wednesday morning, September 25th,
1850, for Quebec. Fare $7.00 to and fro. Obliged to
leave Montreal on return as soon as Friday, October
4th. The country was new to me beyond Fitchburg.

1 [Three Years in California , 1850.]

74 JOURNAL [Oct.

In Ashbumham and afterwards I noticed the wood¬
bine.1

[Eighty-four pages missing, — doubtless the Canada
journal.]

However mean your life is, meet it and live; do not
shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you
are. It looks poorest when you are richest. The fault¬
finder will find faults even in paradise. Love your life,
poor as it is. You may perchance have some pleasant,
thrilling, glorious hours, even in a poorhouse. The set¬
ting sun is reflected from the windows of the almshouse
as brightly as from the rich man’s house. The snow
melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not
see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and
have as cheering thoughts as anywhere, and, indeed, the
town’s poor seem to live the most independent lives of
any. They are simply great enough to receive without
misgiving. Cultivate poverty like sage, like a garden
herb. Do not trouble yourself to get new things, whether
clothes or friends. That is dissipation. Turn the old;
return to them. Things do not change; we change. If
I were confined to a comer in a garret all my days, like
a spider, the world would be just as large to me while I
had my thoughts.2

In all my travels I never came to the abode of the
present.

I live in the angle of a leaden wall, into whose alloy
was poured a little bell-metal. Sometimes in the repose
of my mid-day there reaches my ears a confused tintin-
1 [. Excursions , p. 3; Riv. 3.] a [ Walden , p. 361; Riv. 605, 506.]

1850] CANADIAN HOUSES 75

nabulum from without. It is the noise of my contem¬
poraries.1

That the brilliant leaves of autumn are not withered
ones is proved by the fact that they wilt when gathered
as soon as the green.

But now, October 3 1st, they are all withered. This
has been the most perfect afternoon in the year. The
. air quite warm enough, perfectly still and dry and clear,
and not a cloud in the sky. Scarcely the song of a cricket
is heard to disturb the stillness. When they ceased their
song I do not know. I wonder that the impetus which
our hearing had got did not hurry us into deafness over
a precipitous silence. There must have been a thick web
of cobwebs on the grass this morning, promising this
fair day, for I see them still through the afternoon,
covering not only the grass but the bushes and the trees.
They are stretched across the unfrequented roads from
weed to weed, and broken by the legs of the horses.

I thought to-day that it would be pleasing to study
the dead and withered plants, the ghosts of plants,
which now remain in the fields, for they fill almost as
large a space to the eye as the green have done. They
live not in memory only, but to the fancy and imagina¬
tion.

As we were passing through Ashbumham, by a new
white house which stood at some distance in a field, one
passenger exclaimed so that all the passengers could
hear him, “ There, there ’s not so good a house as that
in all Canada.” And I did not much wonder at his
remark. There is a neatness as well as thrift and elastic
1 [Walden, p. 362; Riv. 507.]

76

JOURNAL

[Oct. 31

comfort, a certain flexible easiness of circumstance when
not rich, about a New England house which the Cana¬
dian houses do not suggest. Though of stone, they were
no better constructed than a stone bam would be with
us. The only building on which money and taste are
expended is the church.1 At Beauport we examined
a magnificent cathedral, not quite completed, where I
do not remember that there were any but the meanest
houses in sight around it.

Our Indian summer, I am tempted to say, is the finest
season of the year. Here has been such a day as I think
Italy never sees.

Though it has been so warm to-day, I found some of
the morning’s frost still remaining under the north side
of a wood, to my astonishment.

Why was this beautiful day made, and no man to
improve it ? We went through Seven-Star ( ?) Lane to
White Pond.

Looking through a stately pine grove, I saw the
western sun falling in golden streams through its aisles.
Its west side, opposite to me, was all lit up with golden
light; but what was I to it? Such sights remind me of
houses which we never inhabit, — that commonly I am
not at home in the world. I see somewhat fairer than
I enjoy or possess.

A fair afternoon, a celestial afternoon, cannot occur
but we mar our pleasure by reproaching ourselves that
we do not make all our days beautiful. The thought of
what I am, of my pitiful conduct, deters me from receiv¬
ing what joy I might from the glorious days that visit me.

1 [Excursions, p. 100; Riv. 124.]

1850] A FROG IN THE MILK 77

After the era of youth is passed, the knowledge of our¬
selves is an alloy that spoils our satisfactions.

I am wont to think that I could spend my days con¬
tentedly in any retired country house that I see; for
I see it to advantage now and without incumbrance; I
have not yet imported my humdrum thoughts, my pro¬
saic habits, into it to mar the landscape. What is this
beauty in the landscape but a certain fertility in me ? I
look in vain to see it realized but in my own life. If
I could wholly cease to be ashamed of myself, I think
that all my days would be fair.

When I asked at the principal bookstore in Montreal
to see such books as were published there, the answer
was that none were published there but those of a sta¬
tistical character and the like, that their books came
from the States.1

[Two thirds of a page missing]

As once he was riding past Jennie Dugan’s, was
invited by her boys to look into their mother’s spring-
house. He looked in. It was a delectable place to keep
butter and milk cool and sweet in dog-days, — but there
was a leopard frog swimming in the milk, and another
sitting on the edge of the pan.

[Half a page missing.]

Thou art a personality so vast and universal that I
have never seen one of thy features. I am suddenly very
near to another land than can be bought and sold;
this is not Charles Miles’s swamp. This is a far, far-
1 [, Excursions , p. 15; Riv. 18.]

78

JOURNAL

[1850

away field on the confines of the actual Concord, where
nature is partially present. These farms I have myself
surveyed; these lines I have run; these bounds I have
set up; they have no chemistry to fix them; they fade
from the surface of the glass (the picture); this light
is too strong for them.

[Four and two thirds pages missing.]

My dear, my dewy sister, let thy rain descend on me.
I not only love thee, but I love the best of thee; that is
to love thee rarely. I do not love thee every day. Com¬
monly I love those who are less than thou. I love thee
only on great days. Thy dewy words feed me like the
manna of the morning. I am as much thy sister as thy
brother. Thou art as much my brother as my sister.
It is a portion of thee and a portion of me which are of
kin. Thou dost not have to woo me. I do not have
to woo thee. O my sister! O Diana, thy tracks are on
the eastern hills. Thou surely passedst that way. I, the
hunter, saw them in the morning dew. My eyes are
the hounds that pursue thee. Ah, my friend, what if I
do not answer thee ? I hear thee. Thou canst speak;
I cannot. I hear and foiget to answer. I am occupied
with hearing. I awoke and thought of thee; thou wast
present to my mind. How earnest thou there ? Was I
not present to thee likewise ? 1

The oystermen had anchored their boat near the shore
without regard to the state of the tide, and when we
came to it to set sail, just after noon, we found that
it was aground. Seeing that they were preparing to
1 [Charming, pp. 70, 71; Sanborn, pp. 259, 260.]

79

1850] AGROUND AT PATCHOGUE

push it off, I was about to take off my shoes and stock¬
ings in order to wade to it first, but a Dutch sailor with
a singular bullfrog or trilobite expression of the eyes,
whose eyes were like frog ponds in the broad platter
of his cheeks and gleamed like a pool covered with
frog-spittle, immediately offered me the use of his back.
So mounting, with my legs under his arms, and hug¬
ging him like one of [the] family, he set me aboard of
the periauger?

They then leaned their hardest against the stem,
bracing their feet against the sandy bottom in two feet
of water, the Dutchman with his broad back among
them. In the most Dutch-like and easy way they
applied themselves to this labor, while the skipper
tried to raise the bows, never jerking or hustling but
silently exerting what vigor was inherent in them, doing,
no doubt, their utmost endeavor, while I pushed with a
spike pole; but it was all in vain. It was decided to be
unsuccessful; we did not disturb its bed by a grain of
sand. “ Well, what now ? 99 said I. “ How long have we
got to wait ? ” “ Till the tide rises,” said the captain.
But no man knew of the tide, how it was. So I went in
to bathe, looking out for sharks and chasing crabs, and
the Dutchman waded out among the mussels to spear
a crab. The skipper stuck a clamshell into the sand
at the water’s edge to discover if it was rising, and
the sailors, — the Dutchman and the other, — having
got more drink at Oakes’s, stretched themselves on the
seaweed close to the water’s edge [and] went to sleep.
After an hour or more we could discover no change in
the shell even by a hair’s breadth, from which we learned

JOURNAL

80

[1850

that it was about the turn of the tide and we must wait
some hours longer.1

I once went in search of the relics of a human body
— a week after a wreck — which had been cast up the
day before on to the beach, though the sharks had
stripped off the flesh. I got the direction from a light¬
house. I should find it a mile or two distant over the
sand, a dozen rods from the water, by a stick which was
stuck up covered with a cloth. Pursuing the direction
pointed out, I expected that I should have to look very
narrowly at the sand to find so small an object, but
so completely smooth and bare was the beach — half
a mile wide of sand — and so magnifying the mirage
toward the sea that when I was half a mile distant the in¬
significant stick or sliver which marked the spot looked
like a broken mast in the sand. As if there was no other
object, this trifling sliver had puffed itself up to the vis¬
ion to fill the void; and there lay the relics in a certain
state, rendered perfectly inoffensive to both bodily and
spiritual eye by the surrounding scenery, — a slight in¬
equality in the sweep of the shore. Alone with the sea
and the beach, attending to the sea, whose hollow roar
seemed addressed to the ears of the departed, — articu¬
late speech to them. It was as conspicuous on that sandy
plain as if a generation had labored to pile up a cairn
there. Where there were so few objects, the least was ob¬
vious as a mausoleum. It reigned over the shore. That
dead body possessed the shore as no living one could. It
showed a title to the sands which no living ruler could.2

1 [See pp. 49-51.]

2 [Cape Codt pp. 107, 108; Riv. 126, 127. See also pp. 49-51 of this
volume.]

ECHOES

81

1850]

My father was commissary at Fort Independence in
the last war. He says that the baker whom he engaged
returned eighteen ounces of bread for sixteen of flour,
and was glad of the job on those terms.

In a pleasant spring morning all men’s sins are for¬
given. You may have known your neighbor yesterday
for a drunkard and a thief, and merely pitied or despised
him, and despaired of the world; but the sun shines
bright and warm this first spring morning, and you meet
him quietly, serenely at any work, and see how even
his exhausted, debauched veins and nerves expand
with still joy and bless the new day, feel the spring
influence with the innocence 1 [Two thirds of a page
missing.]

There is a good echo from that wood to one stand¬
ing on the side of Fair Haven. It was particularly good
to-day. The woodland lungs seemed particularly
sound to-day; they echoed your shout with a fuller and
rounder voice than it was given in, seeming to mouth
it. It was uttered with a sort of sweeping intonation
half round a vast circle, ore rotundo , by a broad dell
among the tree-tops passing it round to the entrance of
all the aisles of the wood. You had to choose the right
key or pitch, else the woods would not echo it with
any spirit, and so with eloquence. Of what significance
is any sound if Nature does not echo it ? It does not
prevail. It dies away as soon as uttered. I wonder that
wild men have not made more of echoes, or that we do
1 I Walden , pp. 346, 347; Riv. 484, 485.]

82

JOURNAL

[1850

not hear that they have made more. It would be a
pleasant, a soothing and cheerful mission to go about
the country in search of them, — articulating, speak¬
ing, vocal, oracular, resounding, sonorous, hollow, pro¬
phetic places; places wherein to found an oracle, sites
for oracles, sacred ears of Nature.

I used to strike with a paddle on the side of my boat
on Walden Pond, filling the surrounding woods with
circling and dilating sound, awaking the woods, “ stir¬
ring them up,” as a keeper of a menagerie his lions and
tigers, a growl from all. All melody is a sweet echo,
as it were coincident with [the] movement of our oigans.
We wake the echo of the place we are in, its slumbering
music.

I should think that savages would have made a god
of echo.

I will call that Echo Wood.

Crystal Water for White Pond.

There was a sawmill once on Nut Meadow Brook,
near Jennie’s Road. These little brooks have their
history. They once turned sawmills. They even used
their influence to destroy the primitive [forests] which
grew on their banks, and now, for their reward, the sun
is let in to dry them up and narrow their channels.
Their crime rebounds against themselves. You still
find the traces of ancient dams where the simple brooks
were taught to use their influence to destroy the primi¬
tive forests on their borders, and now for penalty they
flow in shrunken channels, with repentant and plaintive
tinkling through the wood, being by an evil spirit turned
against their neighbor forests.

BEGGING INDIANS

83

1850]

What does education often do ? It makes a straight-
cut ditch of a free, meandering brook.

You must walk like a camel, which is said to be the
only beast which ruminates when it walks.

The actual life of men is not without a dramatic
interest to the thinker. It is not in all its respects prosaic.
Seventy thousand pilgrims proceed annually to Mecca
from the various nations of Islam.

I was one evening passing a retired farmhouse which
had a smooth green plat before it, just after sundown,
when I saw a hen turkey which had gone to roost on the
front fence with her wings outspread over her young
now pretty well advanced, who were roosting on the
next rail a foot or two below her. It completed a picture
of rural repose and happiness such as I had not seen
for a long time. A particularly neat and quiet place,
where the very ground was swept around the wood-
pile. The neighboring fence of roots, agreeable forms
for the traveller to study, like the bones of marine mon¬
sters and the horns of mastodons or megatheriums.

You might say of a philosopher that he was in this
world as a spectator.

A squaw came to our door to-day with two pappooses,
and said, “Me want a pie.” Theirs is not common
begging. You are merely the rich Indian who shares
his goods with the poor. They merely offer you an
opportunity to be generous and hospitable.

84

JOURNAL

[1850

Equally simple was the observation which an Indian
made at Mr. Hoar’s door the other day, who went
there to sell his baskets. “No, we don’t want any,’*
said the one who went to the door. “What! do you
mean to starve us ? ” asked the Indian in astonishment,
as he was going out [sic] the gate. The Indian seems to
have said: I too will do like the white man; I will go
into business. He sees his white neighbors well off
around him, and he thinks that if he only enters on the
profession of basket-making, riches will flow in unto
him as a matter of course; just as the lawyer weaves
arguments, and by some magical means wealth and
standing follow. He thinks that when he has made the
baskets he has done his part, now it is yours to buy
them. He has not discovered that it is necessary for
him to make it worth your while to buy them, or make
some which it will be worth your while to buy. With
great simplicity he says to himself: I too will be a
man of business; I will go into trade. It is n’t enough
simply to make baskets. You have got to sell them.1

I have an uncle who once, just as he stepped on to the
dock at New York from a steamboat, saw some strange
birds in the water and called to [a] Gothamite to know
what they were. Just then his hat blew off into the
dock, and the man answered by saying, “ Mister, your
hat is off,” whereupon my uncle, straightening himself
up, asked again with vehemence, “Blast you, sir, I
want to know what those birds are.” By the time that he
had got this information, a sailor had recovered his hat.

1 {Walden, pp. 20, 21; Riv. 32.]

1850] NATURE IN NOVEMBER 85

Nov. 8. The stillness of the woods and fields is re¬
markable at this season of the year. There is not even
the creak of a cricket to be heard. Of myriads of dry
shrub oak leaves, not one rustles. Your own breath
can rustle them, yet the breath of heaven does not
suffice to. The trees have the aspect of waiting for win¬
ter. The autumnal leaves have lost their color; they
are now truly sere, dead, and the woods wear a sombre
color. Summer and harvest are over. The hickories,
birches, chestnuts, no less than the maples, have lost
their leaves. The sprouts, which had shot up so vigor¬
ously to repair the damage which the choppers had done,
have stopped short for the winter. Everything stands
silent and expectant. If I listen, I hear only the note
of a chickadee, — our most common and I may say
native bird, most identified with our forests, — or per¬
chance the scream of a jay, or perchance from the
solemn depths of these woods I hear tolling far away
the knell of one departed. Thought rushes in to fill the
vacuum. As you walk, however, the partridge still bursts
away. The silent, dry, almost leafless, certainly fruit¬
less woods. You wonder what cheer that bird can find
in them. The partridge bursts away from the foot of
a shrub oak like its own dry fruit, immortal bird ! This
sound still startles us. Dry goldenrods, now turned
gray and white, lint our clothes as we walk. And the
drooping, downy seed-vessels of the epilobium remind
us of the summer. Perchance you will meet with a few
solitary asters in the dry fields, with a little color left.
The sumach is stripped of everything but its cone of red
berries.

86

JOURNAL

[Nov. 8

This is a peculiar season, peculiar for its stillness.
The crickets have ceased their song. The few birds
are well-nigh silent. The tinted and gay leaves are now
sere and dead, and the woods wear a sombre aspect.
A carpet of snow under the pines and shrub oaks will
make it look more cheerful. Very few plants have now
their spring. But thoughts still spring in man’s brain.
There are no flowers nor berries to speak of. The
grass begins to die at top. In the morning it is stiff with
frost. Ice has been discovered in somebody’s tub very
early this morn, of the thickness of a dollar. The flies
are betwixt life and death. The wasps come into the
houses and settle on the walls and windows. All insects
go into crevices. The fly is entangled in a web and
struggles vainly to escape, but there is no spider to secure
him; the corner of the pane is a deserted camp. When
I lived in the woods the wasps came by thousands to my
lodge in November, as to winter quarters, and settled
on my windows and on the walls over my head, some¬
times deterring visitors from entering. Each morning,
when they were numbed with cold, I swept some of
them out. But I did not trouble myself to get rid of them.
They never molested me, though they bedded with me,
and they gradually disappeared into what crevices I do
not know, avoiding winter.1 I saw a squash-bug go
slowly behind a clapboard to avoid winter. As some of
these melon seeds come up in the garden again in the
spring, so some of these squash-bugs come forth. The
flies are for a long time in a somnambulic state. They

1 [Walden, p. 265 (Riv. 872, 373), where October is the month
named.]

87

1850] THE APPROACH OF WINTER

have too little energy or vis vitoe to clean their wings or
heads, which are covered with dust. They buzz and
bump their heads against the windows two or three
times a day, or lie on their backs in a trance, and that is
all, — two or three short spurts. One of these mornings
we shall hear that Mr. Minott had to break the ice to
water his cow. And so it will go on till the ground
freezes. If the race had never lived through a winter,
what would they think was coming ?

Walden Pond has at last fallen a little. It has been
so high over the stones — quite into the bushes — that
walkers have been excluded from it.1 There has been
no accessible shore. All ponds have been high. The
water stood higher than usual in the distant ponds
which I visited and had never seen before. It has been
a peculiar season. At Goose Pond, I notice that the
birches of one year’s growth from the stumps stand¬
ing in the water are all dead, apparently killed by the
water, unless, like the pine, they die down after spring¬
ing from the stump.

It is warm somewhere any day in the year. You will
find some nook in the woods generally, at mid-forenoon
of the most blustering day, where you may forget the
cold. I used to resort to the northeast side of Walden,
where the sun, reflected from the pine woods on the
stony shore, made it the fireside of the pond. It is so
much pleasanter and wholesomer to be warmed by the
sun when you can, than by a fire.

I saw to-day a double reflection on the pond of the

1 It reached its height in *52, and has now fallen decidedly in the
fall of ’53.

88

JOURNAL

[Nov. 8

cars passing, one beneath the other, occasioned by a
bright rippled streak on the surface of the water, from
which a second reflection sprang.

One who would study lichens must go into a new
country where the rocks have not been burned.

Therien says that the Canadians say marche-donc to
their horses; and that the acid fruit must be spelled
painbena. 1 He says that the French acre or arpent is
ten perches by ten, of eighteen feet each.

Nov. 9. It is a pleasant surprise to walk over a hill
where an old wood has recently been cut off, and, on
looking round, to see, instead of dense ranks of trees
almost impermeable to light, distant well-known blue
mountains in the horizon and perchance a white village
over an expanded open country. I now take this in
preference to all my old familiar walks. So a new pros¬
pect and walks can be created where we least expected
it. The old men have seen other prospects from these
hills than we do. There was the old Kettell place, now
Watt’s, which I surveyed for him last winter and lotted
off, where twenty-five years ago I played horse in the
paths of a thick wood and roasted apples and potatoes
in an old pigeon-place 2 and gathered fruit at the pie-
apple tree. A week or two after I surveyed it, it now
being rotten and going to waste, I walked there and
was surprised to find the place and prospect which I
have described.

1 [See Excursions , p. 48; Riv. 59.]

2 [See pp. 499, 500.]

1850] CATS RUN WILD 89

I found many fresh violets (Viola pedata) to-day
('November 9th) in the woods.

Saw a cat on the Great Fields, wilder than a rabbit,
hunting artfully. I remember to have seen one once
walking about the stony shore at Walden Pond. It is
not often that they wander so far from the houses. I
once, however, met with a cat with young kittens in
the woods, quite wild.1

The leaves of the larch are now yellow and falling
off. Just a month ago, I observed that the white pines
were parti-colored, green and yellow, the needles of the
previous year now falling. Now I do not observe any
yellow ones, and I expect to find that it is only for a few
weeks in the fall after the new leaves have done grow¬
ing that there are any yellow and falling, — that there
is a season when we may say the old pine leaves are now
yellow, and again, they are fallen. The trees were
not so tidy then; they are not so full now. They look
best when contrasted with a field of snow.

A rusty sparrow or two only remains to people the
drear spaces. It goes to roost without neighbors.

It is pleasant to observe any growth in a wood.
There is the pitch pine field northeast of Beck Stow’s
Swamp, where some years ago I went a-blackberrying
and observed that the pitch pines were beginning to
come in, and I have frequently noticed since how
fairly they grew, dotting the plain as evenly as if dis¬
persed by art. To-day I was aware that I walked in a
pitch pine wood, which ere long, perchance, I may
survey and lot off for a wood auction and see the chop-
1 [Walden, p. 257; Riv. 361, 362.]

90

JOURNAL

[Nov. 9

pers at their work. There is also the old. pigeon-place
field by the Deep Cut. I remember it as an open
grassy field. It is now one of our most pleasant wood¬
land paths. In the former place, near the edge of the
old wood, the young pines line each side of the path
like a palisade, they grow so densely. It never rains but
it pours, and so I think when I see a young grove of
pitch pines crowding each other to death in this wide
world. These are destined for the locomotive’s maw.
These branches, which it has taken so many years to
mature, are regarded even by the woodman as “ trash.”

Delicate, dry, feathery (perchance fescue) grasses
growing out of a tuft, gracefully bending over the path¬
way. I do not know what they are, but they belong to
the season.

The chickadees, if I stand long enough, hop nearer
and nearer inquisitively, from pine bough to pine
bough, till within four or five feet, occasionally lisping
a note.

The pitcher-plant, though a little frost-bitten and
often cut off by the mower, now stands full of water in
the meadows. I never found one that had not an insect
in it.

I sometimes see well-preserved walls running straight
through the midst of high and old woods, built, of
course, when the soil was cultivated many years ago,
and am surprised to see slight stones still lying one
upon another, as the builder placed them, while this
huge oak has grown up from a chance acorn in the soil.

Though a man were known to have only one ac¬
quaintance in the world, yet there are so many men in

A ROOT FENCE

91

1850]

the world, and they are so much alike, that when he
spoke what might be construed personally, no one
would know certainly whom he meant. Though there
were but two on a desolate island, they would conduct
toward each other in this respect as if each had inter¬
course with a thousand others.

I saw in Canada two or three persons wearing home-
spun gray greatcoats, with comical and conical hoods
which fell back on their backs between the shoulders,
like small bags ready to be turned up over the head
when need was, though then a hat usurped that place.
I saw that these must be what are called capots. They
looked as if they would be convenient and proper
enough as long as the coats were new and tidy, but as
if they would soon come to look like rags and un¬
sightly.1

Nov. 11. Gathered to-day the autumnal dandelion( ?)
and the common dandelion.

Some farmers’ wives use the white ashes of corn-cobs
instead of pearlash.

I am attracted by a fence made of white pine roots.
There is, or rather was, one (for it has been tipped into
the gutter this year) on the road to Hubbard’s Bridge
which I can remember for more than twenty years. It
is almost as indestructible as a wall and certainly re¬
quires fewer repairs. It is light, white, and dry withal,
and its fantastic forms are agreeable to my eye. One
would not have believed that any trees had such snarled
1 [. Excursions , p. 99; Riv. 123.]

92

JOURNAL

[Nov. 11

and gnarled roots. In some instances you have a coarse
network of roots as they interlaced on the surface
perhaps of a swamp, which, set on its edge, really looks
like a fence, with its paling crossing at various angles,
and root repeatedly growing into root, — a rare phe¬
nomenon above ground, — so as to leave open spaces,
square and diamond-shaped and triangular, quite
like a length of fence. It is remarkable how white and
clean these roots are, and that no lichens, or very few,
grow on them; so free from decay are they. The differ¬
ent branches of the roots continually grow into one an¬
other, so as to make grotesque figures, sometimes rude
harps whose resonant strings of roots give a sort of
musical sound when struck, such as the earth spirit
might play on. Sometimes the roots are of a delicate
wine-color here and there, an evening tint. No line of
fence could be too long for me to study each individual
stump. Rocks would have been covered with lichens
by this time. Perhaps they are grown into one another
that they may stand more firmly.

Now is the time for wild apples. I pluck them as a
wild fruit native to this quarter of the earth, fruit of old
trees that have been dying ever since I was a boy and
are not yet dead. From the appearance of the tree
you would expect nothing but lichens to drop from it,
but underneath your faith is rewarded by finding the
ground strewn with spirited fruit. Frequented only by
the woodpecker, deserted now by the farmer, who has
not faith enough to look under the boughs.1 Food for
walkers. Sometimes apples red inside, perfused with a
1 [Excursions, p. S09; Riv. S79.]

AN OLD BONE

93

1850]

beautiful blush, faery food, too beautiful to eat, — apple
of the evening sky, of the Hesperides.1

This afternoon I heard a single cricket singing,
chirruping, in a bank, the only one I have heard for
a long time, like a squirrel or a little bird, clear and
shrill, — as I fancied, like an evening robin, singing in
this evening of the year. A very fine and poetical strain
for such a little singer. I had never before heard the
cricket so like a bird. It is a remarkable note. The
earth-song.

That delicate, waving, feathery diy grass which I saw
yesterday is to be remembered with the autumn. The
dry grasses are not dead for me. A beautiful form has
as much life at one season as another.

I notice that everywhere in the pastures minute young
fragrant fife-everlasting, with only four or five flat-lying
leaves and thread-like roots, all together as big as a four-
pence, spot the ground, like winter rye and grass which
roots itself in the fall against another year. These little
things have bespoken their places for the next season.
They have a little pellet of cotton or down in their centres,
ready for an early start in the spring.

The autumnal ( ?) dandelion is still bright.

I saw an old bone in the woods covered with lichens,
which looked like the bone of an old settler, which yet
some little animal had recently gnawed, and I plainly
saw the marks of its teeth, so indefatigable is Nature to
strip the flesh from bones and return it to dust again.
No little rambling beast can go by some dry and ancient
bone but he must turn aside and try his teeth upon it.

1 [. Excursions , p. 315; Riv. 387.]

94

JOURNAL

[Nov. 11

An old bone is knocked about till it becomes dust;
Nature has no mercy on it. It was quite too ancient to
suggest disagreeable associations. It was like a piece of
dry pine root. It survives like the memory of a man.
With time all that was personal and offensive wears off.
The tooth of envy may sometimes gnaw it and reduce it
more rapidly, but it is much more a prey to forgetful¬
ness. Lichens grow upon it, and at last, in what moment
no man knows, it has completely wasted away and
ceases to be a bone any longer.

The fields are covered now with the empty cups of the
Trichostema dichotommn, all dry.

We had a remarkable sunset to-night. I was walking
in the meadow, the source of Nut Meadow Brook.1

[Two pages missing.]

We walked in so pure and bright a fight, so softly and
serenely bright, I thought I had never bathed in such a
golden flood, without a ripple or a murmur to it. The
west side of every wood and rising ground gleamed like
the boundary of Elysium.2 An adventurous spirit turns
the evening into morning. A little black byook in the
midst of the marsh, just beginning to meander, wind¬
ing slowly round a decaying stump, — an artery of the
meadow.3

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when
you find a trout in the milk.

A people who would begin by burning the fences and
let the forest stand! I saw the fences half consumed,

1 [Excursions, p. 246; Riv. 302.]

8 [Excursions, p. 247; Riv. 303.]

8 [Excursions, p. 247; Riv. 303. J

95

1850] REMAINS OF A COAL-PIT

their ends lost in the middle of the prairie, and some
worldly miser with a surveyor looking after his bounds,
while heaven had taken place around him, and he did
not see the angels around, but was looking for an old
post-hole in the midst of paradise. I looked again and
saw him standing in the middle of a boggy Stygian fen,
surrounded by devils, and he had found his bounds
without a doubt, three little stones where a stake had
been driven, and, looking nearer, I saw that the Prince
of Darkness was his surveyor.1

Nov. 14. Saw to-day, while surveying in the Second
Division woods, a singular round mound in a valley,
made perhaps sixty or seventy years ago. Cyrus Stow
thought it was a pigeon-bed, but I soon discovered the
coal and that it was an old coal-pit. I once mistook
one in the Maine woods for an Indian mound. The
indestructible charcoal told the tale. I had noticed
singular holes and trenches in the former wood, as if a
fox had been dug out. The sun has probably been let in
here many times, and this has been a cultivated field;
and now it is clothed in a savage dress again. The wild,
rank, luxuriant place is where mosses and lichens
abound. We find no heroes’ cairns except those of heroic
colliers, who once sweated here begrimed and dingy,
who lodged here, tending their fires, who lay on a beetle
here, perchance, to keep awake.

Nov. 15. I saw to-day a very perfect lichen on a rock
in a meadow. It formed a perfect circle about fifteen
1 [Excursions, p. 212 ; Riv. 259, 260.]

96

JOURNAL

[Nov. 15

inches in diameter though the rock was uneven, and was
handsomely shaded by a darker stripe of older leaves,
an inch or more wide, just within its circumference, like
a rich lamp-mat. The recent growth on the outside, half
an inch in width, was a sort of tea-green or bluish-green
color.

The ivy berries are now sere and yellowish, or sand-
colored, like the berries of the dogwood.

The farmers are now casting out their manure, and
removing the muck-heap from the shore of ponds where
it will be inaccessible in the winter; or are doing their
fall plowing, which destroys many insects and mellows
the soil. I also see some pulling their turnips, and even
getting in com which has been left out notwithstanding
the crows. Those who have wood to sell, as the weather
grows colder and people can better appreciate the value
of fuel, lot off their woods and advertise a wood auction.

You can tell when a cat has seen a dog by the size of
her tail.

Nov. 16. I found three good arrowheads to-day
behind Dennis’s. The season for them began some time
ago, as soon as the farmers had sown their winter rye,
but the spring, after the melting of the snow, is still
better.

I am accustomed to regard the smallest brook with as
much interest for the time being as if it were the Orinoco
or Mississippi. What is the difference, I would like to
know, but mere size ? And when a tributary rill empties
in, it is like the confluence of famous rivers I have read

WILDNESS

97

1850]

of. When I cross one on a fence, I love to pause in mid-
passage and look down into the water, and study its
bottom, its little mystery. There is none so small but
you may see a pickerel regarding you with a wary eye, or
a pygmy trout glance from under the bank, or in spring,
perchance, a sucker will have found its way far up its
stream. You are sometimes astonished to see a pickerel
far up some now shrunken rill, where it is a mere puddle
by the roadside. I have stooped to drink at a clear spring
no bigger than a bushel basket in a meadow, from which
a rill was scarcely seen to dribble away, and seen lurking
at its bottom two little pickerel not so big as my finger,
sole monarchs of this their ocean, and who probably
would never visit a larger water.

In literature it is only the wild that attracts us. Dull¬
ness is only another name for tameness. It is the un¬
tamed, uncivilized, free, and wild thinking in Hamlet,
in the Iliad, and in all the scriptures and mythologies
that delights us, — not learned in the schools, not refined
and polished by art. A truly good book is something
as wildly natural and primitive, mysterious and mar¬
vellous, ambrosial and fertile, as a fungus or a lichen.1
Suppose the muskrat or beaver were to turn his views
[sic] to literature, what fresh views of nature would he
present ! The fault of our books and other deeds is that
they are too humane, I want something speaking in some
measure to the condition of muskrats and skunk-cabbage
as well as of men, — not merely to a pining and com¬
plaining coterie of philanthropists.

I discover again about these times that cranberries are
1 [Excursions, p. 231; Riv. 283.]

JOURNAL

98

[Nov. 16

good to eat in small quantities as you are crossing the
meadows.

I hear deep amid the birches some row among the
birds or the squirrels, where evidently some mystery is
being developed to them. The jay is on the alert, mim¬
icking every woodland note. What has happened?
Who ’s dead ? The twitter retreats before you, and you
are never let into the secret. Some tragedy surely is
being enacted, but murder will out. How many little
dramas are enacted in the depth of the woods at which
man is not present!

When I am considering which way I will walk, my
needle is slow to settle, my compass varies by a few
degrees and does not always point due southwest; and
there is good authority for these variations in the hea¬
vens. It pursues the straighter course for it at last, like
the ball which has come out of a rifle, or the quoit that
is twirled when cast. To-day it is some particular wood
or meadow or deserted pasture in that direction that is
my southwest.1

I love my friends very much, but I find that it is of
no use to go to see them. I hate them commonly when
I am near them. They belie themselves and deny me
continually.

Somebody shut the cat’s tail in the door just now,
and she made such a caterwaul as has driven two whole
worlds out of my thoughts. I saw unspeakable things
in the sky and looming in the horizon of my mind, and
now they are all reduced to a cat’s tail. Vast films of
thought floated through my brain, like clouds pregnant
1 [Excursions, p. 217; Riv. 266.]

FRIGHTENED COWS

1850]

99

with rain enough to fertilize and restore a world, and
now they are all dissipated.

There is a place whither I should walk to-day.
Though oftenest I fail to find, when by accident I ram¬
ble into it, great is my delight. I have stood by my door
sometimes half an hour, irresolute as to what course I
should take.1

Apparently all but the evergreens and oaks have lost
their leaves now. It is singular that the shrub oaks retain
their leaves through the winter. Why do they ?

The walnut trees spot the sky with black nuts. Only
catkins are seen on the birches.

I saw the other day a dead limb which the wind or
some other cause had broken nearly off, which had lost
none of its leaves, though all the rest of the tree, which
was flourishing, had shed them.

There seems to be in the fall a sort of attempt at a
spring, a rejuvenescence, as if the winter were not
expected by a part of nature. Violets, dandelions, and
some other flowers blossom again, and mulleins and in¬
numerable other plants begin again to spring and are
only checked by the increasing cold. There is a slight
uncertainty whether there will be any winter this year.

I was pleased to-day to hear a great noise and tram¬
pling in the woods produced by some cows which came
running toward their homes, which apparently had been
scared by something unusual, as their ancestors might
have been by wolves. I have known sheep to be scared
in the same [way] and a whole flock to run bleating to
me for protection.

1 [Excursions, p. 217; Riv. 265, 266.]

JOURNAL

100

[Nov. 16

What shall we do with a man who is afraid of the
woods, their solitude and darkness ? What salvation is
there for him ? God is silent and mysterious.

Some of our richest days are those in which no sun
shines outwardly, but so much the more a sun shines
inwardly. I love nature, I love the landscape, because
it is so sincere. It never cheats me. It never jests. It is
cheerfully, musically earnest. I lie and relie [sic] on the
earth.

Land where the wood has been cut off and is just
beginning to come up again is called sprout land.

The sweet-scented life-everlasting has not lost its
scent yet, but smells like the balm of the fields.

The partridge-berry leaves checker the ground on the
side of moist hillsides in the woods. Are they not pro¬
perly called checker- berries ?

The era of wild apples will soon be over. I wander
through old orchards of great extent, now all gone to
decay, all of native fruit which for the most part went
to the cider-mill. But since the temperance reform and
the general introduction of grafted fruit, no wild apples,
such as I see everywhere in deserted pastures, and where
the woods have grown up among them, are set out. I
fear that he who walks over these hills a century hence
will not know the pleasure of knocking off wild apples.
Ah, poor man ! there are many pleasures which he will
be debarred from! Notwithstanding the prevalence of
the Baldwin and the Porter, I doubt if as extensive
orchards are set out to-day in this town as there were
a century ago, when these vast straggling cider-orchards
were planted. Men stuck in a tree then by every wall-

101

1850] BEGGING GOVERNMENTS

side and let it take its chance. I see nobody planting
trees to-day in such out of the way places, along almost
every road and lane and wall-side, and at the bottom of
dells in the wood. Now that they have grafted trees and
pay a price for them, they collect them into a plot by their
houses and fence them in.1

My Journal should be the record of my love. I would
write in it only of the things I love, my affection for any
aspect of the world, what I love to think of. I have no
more distinctness or pointedness in my yearnings than
an expanding bud, which does indeed point to flower
and fruit, to summer and autumn, but is aware of
the warm sun and spring influence only. I feel ripe
for something, yet do nothing, can’t discover what that
thing is. I feel fertile merely. It is seedtime with me.
I have lain fallow long enough.

Notwithstanding a sense of unworthiness which pos¬
sesses me, not without reason, notwithstanding that I
regard myself as a good deal of a scamp, yet for the most
part the spirit of the universe is unaccountably kind to
me, and I enjoy perhaps an unusual share of happiness.
Yet I question sometimes if there is not some settlement
to come.

Nov. 17. It is a strange age of the world this, when
empires, kingdoms, and republics come a-begging to our
doors and utter their complaints at our elbows. I can¬
not take up a newspaper but I find that some wretched
government or other, hard pushed and on its last legs,
is interceding with me, the reader, to vote for it, —
1 [Excursions, p. 321; Riv. 394, 395.]

102

JOURNAL

[Nov. 17

more importunate than an Italian beggar. Why does it
not keep its castle in silence, as I do ? The poor Presi¬
dent, what with preserving his popularity and doing his
duty, does not know what to do. If you do not read the
newspapers, you may be impeached for treason. The
newspapers are the ruling power. What Congress does
is an afterclap. Any other government is reduced to a
few marines at Fort Independence. If a man neglects
to read the Daily Times, government will go on its
knees to him; this is the only treason in these days.
The newspapers devote some of their columns specially
to government and politics without charge, and this is
all that saves it, but I never read those columns.1

I found this afternoon, in a field of winter rye, a snap¬
ping turtle’s egg, white and elliptical like a pebble,
mistaking it for which I broke it. The little turtle was
perfectly formed, even to the dorsal ridge, which was
distinctly visible.

“ Chesipooc Sinus ” is on Wytfliet’s Map of 159-.

Even the Dutch were forward to claim the great river
of Canada. In a map of New Belgium in Ogilby’s
“America,” 1670, the St. Lawrence is also called “De
Groote Rivier van Niew Nederlandt.” 2

On this same map, east of Lake Champlain, called
“Lacus Irocoisiensis ” or in Dutch “Meer der Irocoi-
sen,” is a chain of mountains answering to the Green
Mountains of Vermont, and “ Irocoisia,” or the country
of the Iroquois, between the mountains and the lake.

1 [Cape Cod , and Miscellanies , pp. 480, 481; Misc., Riv. 285, 286.]

* [. Excursions , p. 91; Riv. 113.]

THE FIRST COLD DAY

103

1850]

Nov . 19. The first really cold day. I find, on breaking
off a shrub oak leaf, a little fife at the foot of the leaf¬
stalk, so that a part of the green comes off. It has not
died quite down to the point of separation, as it will do,
I suppose, before spring. Most of the oaks have lost
their leaves except on the lower branches, as if they were
less exposed and less mature there, and felt the changes
of the seasons less. The leaves have either fallen or
withered long since, yet I found this afternoon, cold as
it is, — and there has been snow in the neighborhood,
— some sprouts which had come up this year from the
stump of a young black-looking oak, covered still with
handsome fresh red and green leaves, very large and
unwithered and unwilted. It was on the south side of
Fair Haven in a warm angle, where the wood was cut
last winter and the exposed edge of the still standing
wood running north and south met the cliff at right
angles and served for a fence to keep off the wind. There
were one or two stumps here whose sprouts had fresh
leaves which transported me back to October. Yet the
surrounding shrub oak leaves were as dry and dead as
usual. There were also some minute birches only a year
old, their leaves still freshly yellow, and some young
wild apple trees apparently still growing, their leaves
as green and tender as in summer. The goldenrods,
one or more species of the white and some yellow ones,
were many of them still quite fresh, though elsewhere
they are all whitish and dry. I saw one whose top rose
above the edge of a rock, and so much of it was turned
white and dry; but the lower part of its raceme was still
yellow. Some of the white species seemed to have started

104

JOURNAL

[Nov. 19

again as if for another spring. They had sprung up
freshly a foot or more, and were budded to blossom,
fresh and green. And sometimes on the same stem were
old and dry and white downy flowers, and fresh green
blossom-buds not yet expanded. I saw there some pale
blue asters still bright, and the mullein leaves still large
and green, one green to its top. And I discovered that
when I put my hand on the mullein leaves they felt
decidedly warm, but the radical leaves of the golden-
rods felt cold and clammy. There was also the colum¬
bine, its leaves still alive and green; and I was pleased
to smell the pennyroyal which I had bruised, though this
dried up long ago. Each season is thus drawn out and
lingers in certain localities, as the birds and insects know
very well. If you penetrate to some warm recess under
a cliff in the woods, you will be astonished at the amount
of summer life that still flourishes there. No doubt
more of the summer’s life than we are aware thus slips
by and outmanoeuvres the winter, gliding from fence to
fence. I have no doubt that a diligent search in pro¬
per places would discover many more of our summer
flowers thus lingering till the snow came, than we suspect.
It is as if the plant made no preparation for winter.

Now that the grass is withered and the leaves are
withered or fallen, it begins to appear what is evergreen :
the partridge[-berry] and checkerberry, and winter-
green leaves even, are more conspicuous.

The old leaves have been off the pines now for a
month.

I once found a kernel of corn in the middle of a deep
wood by Walden, tucked in behind a lichen on a pine.

1850] A NEW CRANBERRY 105

about as high as my head, either by a crow or a squirrel.
It was a mile at least from any corn-field.

Several species plainly linger till the snow comes.

Nov. 20. It is a common saying among country
people that if you eat much fried hasty pudding it will
make your hair curl. My experience, which was con¬
siderable, did not confirm this assertion.

Horace Hosmer was picking out to-day half a bushel
or more of a different and better kind of cranberry, as
he thought, separating them from the rest. They are
very dark red, shaded with lighter, harder and more
oblong, somewhat like the fruit of the sweet-briar or a
Canada red plum, though I have no common cranberry
to compare with them. He says that they grow apart
from the others. I must see him about it. It may prove
to be one more of those instances in which the farmer
detects a new species and makes use of the knowledge
from year to year in his profession, while the botanist
expressly devoted to such investigation has failed to
observe it.

The farmer, in picking over many bushels of cran¬
berries year after year, finds at length, or has forced
upon his observation, a new species of that berry, and
avails himself thereafter of his discovery for many years
before the naturalist is aware of the fact.

Desor, who has been among the Indians at Lake
Superior this summer, told me the other day that they
had a particular name for each species of tree, as of the
maple, but they had but one word for flowers; they did
not distinguish the species of the last.

106 JOURNAL [Nov. 20

It is often the unscientific man who discovers the new
species. It would be strange if it were not so. But we
are accustomed properly to call that only a scientific
discovery which knows the relative value of the thing
discovered, uncovers a fact to mankind.

Nov. 21. For a month past the grass under the pines
has been covered with a new carpet of pine leaves. It is
remarkable that the old leaves turn and fall in so short
a time.

Some of the densest and most impenetrable clumps
of bushes I have seen, as well on account of the closeness
of their branches as of their thorns, have been wild
apples. Its [sic] branches as stiff as those of the black
spruce on the tops of mountains.1

I saw a herd of a dozen cows and young steers and
oxen on Conantum this afternoon, running about and
frisking in unwieldy sport like huge rats. Any sportive¬
ness in cattle is unexpected. They even played like
kittens, in their way; shook their heads, raised their
tails, and rushed up and down the hill.2

The witch-hazel blossom on Conantum has for the
most part lost its ribbons now.

Some distant angle in the sun where a lofty and dense
white pine wood, with mingled gray and green, meets a
hill covered with shrub oaks, affects me singularly, rein¬
spiring me with all the dreams of my youth. It is a place
far away, yet actual and where we have been. I saw the
sun falling on a distant white pine wood whose gray and

1 [ Excursions , p. 304; Riv. 373.]

* [Excursions, p. 235; Riv. 287, 288.]

FAIR HAVEN POND

107

1850]

moss-covered stems were visible amid the green, in an
angle where this forest abutted on a hill covered with
shrub oaks. It was like looking into dreamland. It is
one of the avenues to my future. Certain coincidences
like this are accompanied by a certain flash as of hazy
lightning, flooding all the world suddenly with a tremu¬
lous serene light which it is difficult to see long at a time.

I saw Fair Haven Pond with its island, and meadow
between the island and the shore, and a strip of perfectly
still and smooth water in the lee of the island, and two
hawks, fish hawks perhaps, sailing over it. I did not see
how it could be improved. Yet I do not see what these
things can be. I begin to see such an object when I
cease to understand it and see that I did not realize or
appreciate it before, but I get no further than this. How
adapted these forms and colors to my eye! A meadow
and an island ! What are these things ? Yet the hawks
and the ducks keep so aloof! and Nature is so reserved!
I am made to love the pond and the meadow, as the
wind is made to ripple the water.1

As I looked on the Walden woods eastward across
the pond, I saw suddenly a white cloud rising above
their tops, now here, now there, marking the progress
of the cars which were rolling toward Boston far below,
behind many hills and woods.

October must be the month of ripe and tinted leaves.
Throughout November they are almost entirely withered
and sombre, the few that remain. In this month the sun
is valued. When it shines warmer or brighter we are
sure to observe it. There are not so many colors to attract
1 [See p. 161.]

108

JOURNAL

[Nov. 21

the eye. We begin to remember the summer. We walk
fast to keep warm. For a month past I have sat by a
fire.

Every sunset inspires me with the desire to go to a
West as distant and as fair as that into which the sun
goes down.1

I get nothing to eat in my walks now but wild apples,
sometimes some cranberries, and some walnuts. The
squirrels have got the hazelnuts and chestnuts.

Nov. 23. To-day it has been finger-cold.2 Unexpect¬
edly I found ice by the side of the brooks this afternoon
nearly an inch thick. Prudent people get in their barrels
of apples to-day.8 The difference of the temperature of
various localities is greater than is supposed. If I was
surprised to find ice on the sides of the brooks, I was
much more surprised to find quite a pond in the woods,
containing an acre or more, quite frozen over so that
I walked across it. It was in a cold comer, where a pine
wood excluded the sun. In the larger ponds and the
river, of course, there is no ice yet. It is a shallow,
weedy pond. I lay down on the ice and looked through
at the bottom. The plants appeared to grow more up¬
rightly than on the dry land, being sustained and pro¬
tected by the water. Caddis-worms were everywhere
crawling about in their handsome quiver-like sheaths or
cases.

The wild apples, though they are more mellow and
edible, have for some time lost their beauty, as well as

1 [. Excursions , p. 219; Riv. 268.]

* [Excursions, p. 319; Riv. 392.]

8 [Ibid.]

1850] FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES 109

the leaves, and now too they are beginning to freeze.
The apple season is well-nigh over. Such, however, as
are frozen while sound are not unpleasant to eat when
the spring sun thaws them.1

I find it to be the height of wisdom not to endeavor
to oversee myself and live a life of prudence and com¬
mon sense, but to see over and above myself, entertain
sublime conjectures, to make myself the thoroughfare of
thrilling thoughts, five all that can be lived. The man
who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he not do ?

Nov. 24. Plucked a buttercup on Bear Hill to-day.

I have certain friends whom I visit occasionally,
but I commonly part from them early with a certain
bitter-sweet sentiment. That which we love is so
mixed and entangled with that we hate in one another
that we are more grieved and disappointed, aye, and
estranged from one another, by meeting than by absence.
Some men may be my acquaintances merely, but one
whom I have been accustomed to regard, to idealize, to
have dreams about as a friend, and mix up intimately
with myself, can never degenerate into an acquaintance.
I must know him on that higher ground or not know
him at all. We do not confess and explain, because we
would fain be so intimately related as to understand
each other without speech. Our friend must be broad.
His must be an atmosphere coextensive with the uni¬
verse, in which we can expand and breathe. For the
most part we are smothered and stifled by one another.
I go and see my friend and try his atmosphere. If our
1 [Excursions, p. 319; Riv. 392.]

JOURNAL

110

[Nov. 24

atmospheres do not mingle, if we repel each other
strongly, it is of no use to stay.

Nov. 25. I feel a little alarmed when it happens that
I have walked a mile into the woods bodily, without
getting there in spirit. I would fain forget all my morn¬
ing’s occupation, my obligations to society. But some¬
times it happens that I cannot easily shake off the
village; the thought of some work, some surveying,
will run in my head, and I am not where my body is,
I am out of my senses. In my walks I would return to
my senses like a bird or a beast. What business have I
in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the
woods ? 1

This afternoon, late and cold as it is, has been a sort
of Indian summer. Indeed, I think that we have sum¬
mer days from time to time the winter through, and that
it is often the snow on the ground makes the whole
difference. This afternoon the air was indescribably
clear and exhilarating, and though the thermometer
would have shown it to be cold, I thought that there was
a finer and purer warmth than in summer; a wholesome,
intellectual warmth, in which the body was warmed
by the mind’s contentment. The warmth was hardly
sensuous, but rather the satisfaction of existence.

I found Fair Haven skimmed entirely over, though the
stones which I threw down on it from the high bank on
the east broke through. Yet the river was open. The
landscape looked singularly clean and pure and dry,
the air, like a pure glass, being laid over the picture,
1 [Excursions, p. 211; Riv. 258, 259.]

Ill

1850] A MUSKRAT ON THE ICE

the trees so tidy, stripped of their leaves; the meadows
and pastures, clothed with clean dry grass, looked as
if they had been swept; ice on the water and winter in
the air, but yet not a particle of snow on the ground.
The woods, divested in great part of their leaves, are
being ventilated. It is the season of perfect works,
of hard, tough, ripe twigs, not of tender buds and
leaves. The leaves have made their wood, and a myriad
new withes stand up all around pointing to the sky, able
to survive the cold. It is only the perennial that you
see, the iron age of the year.

These expansions of the river skim over before
the river itself takes on its icy fetters. What is the
analogy ?

I saw a muskrat come out of a hole in the ice. He is a
man wilder than Ray or Melvin. While I am looking
at him, I am thinking what he is thinking of me. He is a
different sort of a man, that is all. He would dive when
I went nearer, then reappear again, and had kept open
a place five or six feet square so that it had not frozen,
by swimming about in it. Then he would sit on the edge
of the ice and busy himself about something, I could not
see whether it was a clam or not. What a cold-blooded
fellow! thoughts at a low temperature, sitting perfectly
still so long on ice covered with water, mumbling a
cold, wet clam in its shell. What safe, low, moderate
thoughts it must have ! It does not get on to stilts. The
generations of muskrats do not fail. They are not
preserved by the legislature of Massachusetts.

Boats are drawn up high which will not be launched
again till spring.

112

JOURNAL

[Nov. 25

There is a beautiful fine wild grass which grows in
the path in sprout land, now dry, white, and waving,
in light beds soft to the touch.

I experience such an interior comfort, far removed
from the sense of cold, as if the thin atmosphere were
rarefied by heat, were the medium of invisible flames,
as if the whole landscape were one great hearthside,
that where the shrub oak leaves rustle on the hillside, I
seem to hear a crackling fire and see the pure flame, and
I wonder that the dry leaves do not blaze into yellow
flames.

I find but little change yet on the south side of the
Cliffs; only the leaves of the wild apple are a little
frostbitten on their edges and curled dry there; but some
wild cherry leaves and blueberries are still fresh and
tender green and red, as well as all the other leaves
and plants which I noticed there the other day.

When I got up so high on the side of the Cliff the
sun was setting like an Indian-summer sun. There
was a purple tint in the horizon. It was warm on
the face of the rocks, and I could have sat till the sun
disappeared, to dream there. It was a mild sunset such
as is to be attended to. Just as the sun shines into us
warmly and serenely, our Creator breathes on us and
re-creates us.

Nov. 26. An inch of snow on ground this morning,
— our first.

Went to-night to see the Indians, who are still living
in tents. Showed the horns of the moose, the black
moose they call it, that goes in lowlands. Homs three

INDIAN LORE

113

1850]

or four feet wide. (The red moose they say is another
kind; runs on mountains and has horns six feet wide.)
Can move their horns. The broad, flat side portions of
the horns are covered with hair, and are so soft when the
creature is alive that you can run a knife through them.1
They color the lower portions a darker color by rubbing
them on alders, etc., to harden them. Make kee-nong-
gun or pappoose cradle, of the broad part of the horn,
putting a rim on it. Once scared, will run all day. A
dog will hang to their lips and be carried along and
swung against a tree and drop off. Always find two or
three together. Can’t run on glare ice, but can run in
snow four feet deep. The caribou can run on ice.2 Some¬
times spear them with a sharp pole, sometimes with a
knife at the end of a pole. Signs, good or bad, from
the turn of the horns. Their caribou-horns had been
gnawed by mice in their wigwams. The moose-horns
and others are not gnawed by mice while the creature
is alive. Moose cover themselves with water, all but
noses, to escape flies.3 About as many now as fifty
years ago.

Imitated the sounds of the moose, caribou, and deer
with a birch-bark horn, which last they sometimes
make very long. The moose can be heard eight or ten
miles sometimes, — a loud sort of bellowing sound,
clearer, more sonorous than the looing of cattle. The
caribou’s, a sort of snort; the small deer, like a lamb.

Made their clothes of the young moose-skin. Cure
the meat by smoking it; use no salt in curing it, but
when they eat it.

1 [Maine Woods , p. 153; Riv. 187.] 2 [Ibid.]

8 [Ibid.]

114

JOURNAL

[Nov. 26

Their spear very serviceable. The inner, pointed
part, of a hemlock knot ; the side spring pieces, of
hickory. Spear salmon, pickerel, trout,
chub, etc.; also by birch-bark light at
night, using the other end of spear as pole.

Their sled, jeborgon or jebongon ( ?), one
foot wide, four or five long, of thin wood
turned up in front; draw by a strong rope
of basswood bark.

Canoe of moose-hide. One hide will
hold three or four. Can be taken apart and put to¬
gether very quickly. Can take out cross-bars and bring
the sides together. A very convenient boat to carry and
cross streams with. They say they did not make birch
canoes till they had edge tools. The birches the light¬
est. They think our birches the same, only second
growth.

Their kee-nong-gun , or cradle, has a hoop to prevent
the child being hurt when it falls. Can’t eat dirt; can
be hung up out of way of snakes.

AboaJc-henjo [ ?], a birch-bark vessel for water. Can

^ boil meat in it with hot stones; takes a long

AvJa time. Also a vessel of birch bark, shaped like
4-Lz2J a pan. Both ornamented by scratching the
bark, which is wrong side out. Very neatly made.
Valued our kettles much.

Did not know use of eye in axe. Put a string through
it and wore it round neck. Cut toes.

Did not like gun. Killed one moose; scared all the
rest.

The squaw-heegun for cooking, a mere stick put

INDIAN INVENTIONS

115

1850]

through the game and stuck in the ground slanted
over the fire, a spit. Can be eating one side while the
other is doing.

The ar-tu-e-se, a stick, string, and bunch of leaves,
which they toss and catch on the point of the stick.
Make great use of it. Make the clouds go off the sun
with it.

Snowshoes of two kinds; one of same shape at both
ends so that the Mohawks could not tell which way
they were going. (Put some rags in the heel-hole to
make a toe-mark ?)

Log trap to catch many kinds of animals. Some for
bears let the log fall six or
seven feet. First there is a
frame, then the little stick

-i which the ani- Side View

mal moves, presses
down, as he goes
through under the
log; then the crook¬
ed stick is hung
over the top of the
frame, and holds
up the log by a string; the weight of the log on this
keeps the little stick up.

A drizzling and misty day this has been, melting the
snow. The mist, divided into a thousand ghostly forms,
was blowing across Walden. Mr. Emerson’s Cliff Hill,
seen from the railroad through the mist, looked like a
dark, heavy, frowning New Hampshire mountain. I
do not understand fully why hills look so much larger

116

JOURNAL

[Nov. 26

at such a time, unless, being the most distant we see and
in the horizon, we suppose them farther off and so mag¬
nify them. I think there can be no looming about it.

Nov. 28. Thursday. Cold drizzling and misty rains,
which have melted the little snow. The farmers are
beginning to pick up their dead wood. Within a day
or two the walker finds gloves to be comfortable, and
begins to think of an outside coat and of boots. Em¬
barks in his boots for the winter voyage.

The Indian talked about “our folks” and “your
folks,” “my grandfather” and “my grandfather’s
cousin,” Samoset.

It is remarkable, but nevertheless true, as far as my
observation goes, that women, to whom we commonly
concede a somewhat finer and more sibylline nature,
yield a more implicit obedience even to their animal
instincts than men. The nature in them is stronger, the
reason weaker. There are, for instance, many young
and middle-aged men among my acquaintance — shoe¬
makers, carpenters, farmers, and others — who have
scruples about using animal food, but comparatively
few girls or women. The latter, even the most refined,
are the most intolerant of such reforms. I think that the
reformer of the severest, as well as finest, class will find
more sympathy in the intellect and philosophy of man
than in the refinement and delicacy of woman. It is,
perchance, a part of woman’s conformity and easy
nature. Her savior must not be too strong, stern, and
intellectual, but charitable above all tilings.

The thought of its greater independence and its close-

117

1850] THE LITTLE IRISH BOY

ness to nature diminishes the pain I feel when I see a
more interesting child than usual destined to be brought
up in a shanty. I see that for the present the child is
happy and is not puny, and has all the wonders of nature
for its toys. Have I not faith that its tenderness will in
some way be cherished and protected, as the buds of the
spring in the remotest and wildest wintry dell no less
than in the garden plot and summer-house ?

I am the little Irish boy
That lives in the shanty.

I am four years old to-day

And shall soon be one and twenty.

I shall grow up
And be a great man.

And shovel all day
As hard as I can.

Down in the Deep Cut,

Where the men lived
Who made the railroad.

For supper

I have some potato

And sometimes some bread.

And then, if it’s cold,

I go right to bed.

I lie on some straw
Under my father’s coat.

118

JOURNAL

[Nov. 28

At recess I play
With little Billy Gray,

And when school is done.

Then home I run.

And if I meet the cars,

I get on the other track.

And then I know whatever comes
I need n’t look back.

My mother does not cry.

And my father does not scold.

For I am a little Irish boy.

And I ’m four years old.

Every day I go to school
Along the railroad.

It was so cold it made me ciy
The day that it snowed.

And if my feet ache
I do not mind the cold.

For I am a little Irish boy.

And I’m four years old.1

Nov. 29. Still misty, drizzling weather without snow
or ice. The puffballs, with their open rays, checker
the path-side in the woods, but they are not yet dry
enough to make much dust. Damp weather in the fall
seems to cause them to crack open, i. e. their outer skin.

1 [See Journal, vol. iii, pp. 149, 150, 241-244.]

119

1850] AN OCEAN OF MIST

They look white like the shells of five-fingers on the
shore.

The trees and shrubs look larger than usual when seen
through the mist, perhaps because, though near, yet
being in the visible horizon and there being nothing
beyond to compare them with, we naturally magnify
them, supposing them further off.

It is very still yet in the woods. There are no leaves to
rustle, no crickets to chirp, and but few birds to sing.

The pines standing in the ocean of mist, seen from
the Cliffs, are trees in every stage of transition from the
actual to the imaginary. The near are more distinct, the
distant more faint, till at last they are a mere shadowy
cone in the distance. What, then, are these solid pines
become? You can command only a circle of thirty or
forty rods in diameter. As you advance, the trees grad¬
ually come out of the mist and take form before your
eyes. You are reminded of your dreams. Life looks like
a dream. You are prepared to see visions. And now,
just before sundown, the night wind blows up more mist
through the valley, thickening the veil which already
hung over the trees, and the gloom of night gathers early
and rapidly around. Birds lose their way.

II

DECEMBER, 1850
OET. 33)

Dec. 1. It is quite mild and pleasant to-day. I saw a
little green hemisphere of moss which looked as if it
covered a stone, but, thrusting my cane into it, I found
it was nothing but moss, about fifteen inches in diameter
and eight or nine inches high. When I broke it up, it
appeared as if the annual growth was marked by suc¬
cessive layers half an inch deep each. The lower ones
were quite rotten, but the present year’s quite green,
the intermediate white. I counted fifteen or eighteen.
It was quite solid, and I saw that it continued solid as it
grew by branching occasionally, just enough to fill the
newly gained space, and the tender extremities of each
plant, crowded close together, made the firm and com¬
pact surface of the bed. There was a darker line sepa¬
rating the growths, where I thought the surface had been
exposed to the winter. It was quite saturated with
water, though firm and solid.

Dec. 2. The woodpeckers’ holes in the apple trees are
about a fifth of an inch deep or just through the bark and
half an inch apart. They must be the decaying trees that
are most frequented by them, and probably their work
serves to relieve and ventilate the tree and, as well, to
destroy its enemies.

1850] CIRCULATION IN PLANTS 121

The barberries are shrivelled and dried. I find yet
cranberries hard and not touched by the frost.

Dec. 4. Wednesday. Fair Haven Pond is now open,
and there is no snow. It is a beautiful, almost Indian-
summer, afternoon, though the air is more pure and
glassy. The shrub oak fire bums briskly as seen from
the Cliffs. The evergreens are greener than ever. I notice
the row of dwarf willows advanced into the water in
Fair Haven, three or four rods from the dry land, just
at the lowest water-mark. You can get no disease but
cold in such an atmosphere.

Though the sun is now an hour high, there is a peculiar
bright light on the pines and on their stems. The lichens
on their bark reflect it. In the horizon I see a succession
of the brows of hills, bare or covered with wood, — look
over the eyebrows of the recumbent earth. These are
separated by long valleys filled with vapory haze.

If there is a little more warmth than usual at this
season, then the beautiful air which belongs to winter is
perceived and appreciated.

Dec. 6. Being at Newburyport this evening, Dr.
(H. C. ?) Perkins showed me the circulations in the
nitella, which is slightly different from the chara, under
a microscope. I saw plainly the circulation, looking like
bubbles going round in each joint, up one side and down
the other of a sort of white line, and sometimes a dark-
colored mote appeared to be carried along with them.
He said that the circulation could be well seen in the
common celandine, and moreover that when a shade

122

JOURNAL

[Dec. 6

was cast on it by a knife-blade the circulation was
reversed. Ether would stop it, or the death of the
plant.

He showed me a green clamshell, — Anodan fluvia-
tilis , — which he said was a female with young, found
in a pond near by.

Also the head of a Chinook or Flathead.

Also the humerus of a mylodon (of Owen) from
Oregon. Some more remains have been found in Mis¬
souri, and a whole skeleton in Buenos Ayres. A digging
animal.

He could not catch his frogs asleep.

Dec. 8. It snowed in the night of the 6th, and the
ground is now covered, — our first snow, two inches
deep. A week ago I saw cows being driven home from
pasture. Now they are kept at home. Here ’s an end to
their grazing. The farmer improves this first slight
snow to accomplish some pressing jobs, — to move some
particular rocks on a drag, or the like. I perceive how
quickly he has seized the opportunity. I see no tracks
now of cows or men or boys beyond the edge of the
wood. Suddenly they are shut up. The remote pastures
and hills beyond the woods are now closed to cows and
cowherds, aye, and to cowards. I am struck by this
sudden solitude and remoteness which these places have
acquired. The dear privacy and retirement and solitude
which winter makes possible! carpeting the earth with
snow, furnishing more than woolen feet to all walkers,
cronching the snow only. From Fair Haven I see the
hills and fields, aye, and the icy woods in the comer

1850] BLUE-CURLS AND INDIGO-WEED 123

shine, gleam with the dear old wintry sheen. Those
are not surely the cottages I have seen all summer.
They are some cottages which I have in my mind.

Now Fair Haven Pond is open and ground is covered
with snow and ice; a week or two ago the pond was
frozen and the ground was still bare.

Still those particular red oak leaves which I had
noticed are quite unwilted under the cliffs, and the
apple leaves, though standing in snow and ice and
incrusted with the latter, still ripe red, and tender fresh
green leaves.

It is interesting to observe the manner in which the
plants bear their snowy burden. The dry calyx leaves,
like an oblong cup, of the Trichostema dichotomum have
caught the rain or melting snow, and so this little butter¬
boat is filled with a frozen pure drop which stands up
high above the sides of the cup, — so many pearly drops
covering the whole plant, — in the wood-paths. The
pennyroyal there also retains its fragrance under the ice
and snow.

I find that the indigo-weed, whose shade still stands
and holds its black seed-vessels, is not too humble to
escape enemies. Almost every seed-vessel, which con¬
tains half a dozen seeds or more, contains also a little
black six-legged bug about as big as a bug \sw\ which
gnaws the seeds; and sometimes I find a grub, though
it is now cold weather and the plant is covered with ice.
Not only our peas and grain have their weevils, but
the fruit of the indigo-weed!

This evening for the first time the new moon is
reflected from the frozen snow-crust.

124 JOURNAL [Dec. 13

Dec. 13. The river froze over last 'night, — skimmed
over.

Dec. 16. Walden is open still. The river is probably
open again.

There are wild men living along the shores of the
Frozen Ocean. Who shall say that there is not as great
an interval between the civilized man and the savage
as between the savage and the brute ? The undiscovered
polar regions are the home of men.

I am struck with the difference between my feet and
my hands. My feet are much nearer to foreign or inan¬
imate matter or nature than my hands; they are more
brute, they are more like the earth they tread on, they are
more clod-like and lumpish, and I scarcely animate them.

Last Sunday, or the 14th, I walked on Loring’s Pond
to three or four islands there which I had never visited,
not having a boat in the summer. On one containing
an acre or two, I found a low, branching shrub frozen
into the edge of the ice, with a fine spicy scent some¬
what like sweet-fern and a handsome imbricate bud.
When I rubbed the dry-looking fruit in my hands, it
felt greasy and stained them a permanent yellow, which
I could not wash out; it lasted several days, and my
fingers smelled medicinal. I conclude that it is sweet-
gale, and we named the island Myrica Island.

On those unfrequented islands, too, I noticed the red
osier or willow, that common hard-berried plant with
small red buds,1 apparently two kinds of swamp-pink
buds, some yellow, some reddish, a brittle, rough yellow-
1 Panicled andromeda.

PROMETHEA COCOONS

125

1850]

ish bush with handsome pinkish shoots; in one place in
the meadow the greatest quantity of wild rose hips of
various forms that I ever saw, now slightly withered;
they were as thick as winterberries.

I noticed a bush covered with cocoons which were
artfully concealed by two leaves wrapped round them,
one still hanging by its stem, so that they looked like a
few withered leaves left dangling. The worm, having
first encased itself in another leaf for greater protection,
folded more loosely around itself one of the leaves of the
plant, taking care, however, to encase the leaf-stalk and
the twig with a thick and strong web of silk, so far from
depending on the strength of the stalk, which is now
quite brittle. The strongest fingers cannot break it, and
the cocoon can only be got off by slipping it up and off
the twig. There they hang themselves secure for the
winter, proof against cold and the birds, ready to become
butterflies when new leaves push forth.1

The snow everywhere was covered with snow-fleas
like pepper. When you hold a mass in your hand, they
skip and are gone before you know it. They are so
small that they go through and through the new snow.
Sometimes when collected they look like some powder
which the hunter has spilled in the path.

Dec. 17. Flint’s Pond apparently froze completely
over last night. It is about two inches thick. Walden
is only slightly skimmed over a rod from the shore. I
noticed, where it had been frozen for some time near
the shore of Flint’s Pond and the ice was thicker and
1 [Evidently cocoons of the Promethea moth.]

126

JOURNAL

[Dec. 17

whiter, there were handsome spider-shaped dark places,
where the under ice had melted, and the water had
worn it running through, — a handsome figure on the
icy carpet.

I noticed when the snow first came that the days were
very sensibly lengthened by the light being reflected
from the snow. Any work which required light could
be pursued about half an hour longer. So that we may
well pray that the ground may not be laid bare by a
thaw in these short winter days.

Dec. 19. Yesterday I tracked a partridge in the new-
fallen snow, till I came to where she took to flight, and
I could track her no further. I see where the snowbirds
have picked the seeds of the Roman wormwood and
other weeds and have covered the snow with the shells
and husks. The smilax berries are as plump as ever.
The catkins of the alders are as tender and fresh-looking
as ripe mulberries. The dried choke-cherries so abun¬
dant in the swamp are now quite sweet. The witch-
hazel is covered with fruit and drops over gracefully like
a willow, the yellow foundation of its flowers still re¬
maining. I find the sweet-gale (Myrica) by the river
also. The wild apples are frozen as hard as stones, and
rattle in my pockets, but I find that they soon thaw
when I get to my chamber and yield a sweet cider. 1 I am
astonished that the animals make no more use of them.

Dec. 22. The apples are now thawed. This is their
first thawing. Those which a month ago were sour,
1 [. Excursions , p. 320; Riv. 393.]

127

1850] FROZEN-THAWED APPLES

crabbed, and uneatable are now filled with a rich, sweet
cider which I am better acquainted with than with wine.
And others, which have more substance, are a sweet and
luscious food, — in my opinion of more worth than
the pineapples which are imported from the torrid zone.
Those which a month ago I tasted and repented of it,
which the farmer willingly left on the tree, I am now
glad to find have the properly of hanging on like the
leaves of the shrub oak. It is a way to keep cider sweet
without boiling. Let the frost come to freeze them first
solid as stones, and then the sun or a warm winter day —
for it takes but little heat — to thaw them, and they
will seem to have borrowed a flavor from heaven through
the medium of the air in which they hang. I find when I
get home that they have thawed in my pocket and the
ice is turned to cider. But I suspect that after the second
freezing and thawing they will not be so good. I bend
to drink the cup and save my lappets. What are the
half-ripe fruits of the torrid south, to this fruit matured
by the cold of the frigid north. There are those crabbed
apples with which I cheated my companion, and kept a
smooth face to tempt him to eat. Now we both greedily
fill our pockets with them, and grow more social with
their wine. Was there one that hung so high and shel¬
tered by the tangled branches that our sticks could not
dislodge it ? It is a fruit never brought to market that
I am aware of, — quite distinct from the apple of the
markets, as from dried apple and cider. It is not every
winter that produces it in perfection.1

In winter I can explore the swamps and ponds. It is
1 [Excursions, pp. 319, 320; Riv. 392-394.]

128

JOURNAL

[Dec. 22

a dark-aired winter day, yet I see the summer plants
still peering above the snow. There are but few tracks
in all this snow. It is the Yellow Knife River or the
Saskatchewan. The large leafy lichens on the white
pines, especially on the outside of the wood, look almost
a golden yellow in the light reflected from the snow,
while deeper in the wood they are ash-colored. In the
swamps the dry, yellowish-colored fruit of the poison
dogwood hangs like jewelry on long, drooping stems.
It is pleasant to meet it, it has so much character rela¬
tively to man. Here is a stump on which a squirrel has
sat and stripped the pine cones of a neighboring tree.
Their cores and scales lie all around. He knew that
they contained an almond 1 before the naturalist did.
He has long been a close observer of Nature; opens her
caskets. I see more tracks in the swamps than else¬
where.

Dec. 23. Here is an old-fashioned snow-storm. There
is not much passing on railroads. The engineer says it
is three feet deep above. Walden is frozen, one third of
it, though I thought it was all frozen as I stood on the
shore on one side only. There is no track on the Walden
road. A traveller might cross it in the woods and not
be sure it was a road. As I pass the farmers’ houses I
observe the cop [sic] of the sled propped up with a stick
to prevent its freezing into the snow. The needles of the
pines are drooping like cockerels’ feathers after a rain,
and frozen together by the sleety snow. The pitch pines
now bear their snowy fruit.

1 [See Journal , vol. i, p. 338.]

129

1850] A SHRIKE WITH PREY

I can discern a faint foot or sled path sooner when
the ground is covered with snow than when it is bare.
The depression caused by the feet or the wheels is more
obvious; perhaps the light and shade betray it, but
I think it is mainly because the grass and weeds rise
above it on each side and leave it blank, and a blank
space of snow contrasts more strongly with the woods
or grass than bare or beaten ground.

Even the surface of the snow is wont to be in waves
like billows of the ocean.

Dec. 24. In walking across the Great Meadows to-day
on the snow-crust, I noticed that the fine, dry snow
which was blown over the surface of the frozen field,
when I [looked] westward over it or toward the sun,
looked precisely like steam curling up from its surface,
as sometimes from a wet roof when the sun comes out
after a rain.

The snow catches only in the hollows and against the
reeds and grass, and never rests there, but when it has
formed a broad and shallow drift or a long and nar¬
row one like a winrow on the ice, it blows away again
from one extremity, and leaves often a thin, tongue-like
projection at one end, some inches above the firm
crust.

I observe that there are many dead pine-needles
sprinkled over the snow, which had not fallen before.

Saw a shrike pecking to pieces a small bird, appar¬
ently a snowbird. At length he took him up in his bill,
almost half as big as himself, and flew slowly off with
his prey dangling from his beak. I find that I had not

JOURNAL

130

[Dec. 24

associated such actions with my idea of birds. It was
not birdlike.

It is never so cold but it melts' somewhere. Our mason
well remarked that he had sometimes known it to be
melting and freezing at the same time on a particular
side of a house; while it was melting on the roof the
icicles [were] forming under the eaves. It is always
melting and freezing at the same time when icicles are
formed.

Our thoughts are with those among the dead into
whose sphere we are rising, or who are now rising into
our own. Others we inevitably forget, though they be
brothers and sisters. Thus the departed may be nearer
to us than when they were present. At death our friends
and relations either draw nearer to us and are found
out, or depart further from us and are forgotten. Friends
are as often brought nearer together as separated by
death.

Dec. 26. Thursday. The pine woods seen from the
hilltops, now that the ground is covered with show, are
not green but a dark brown, greenish-brown perhaps.
You see dark patches of wood. There are still half a
dozen fresh ripe red and glossy oak leaves left on the
bush under the Cliffs.

Walden not yet more than half frozen over.

Dec. 30. In R. Gordon Cumming’s “Hunter’s Life
in South Africa,” 1 1 find an account of the honey-bird,

1 [Five Years of a Hunter's Life in the Far Interior of South Africa,
1850.]

131

1850] FROM GORDON CUMMING

which will lead a person to a wild bees’ nest and, having
got its share of the spoil, will sometimes lead to a second
and third. (Vol. I, page 49.)

He saw dry sheep’s dung burning, and after eighteen
months it was burning still. One heap was said to have
burned seven years. Remarkable for burning slowly.
(Page 62.)

He came across a Boer who manufactured ashes
by burning a particular bush and sold it to the richer
Boers. (Page 71.)

He says that the oryx or gemsbok, a kind of ante¬
lope, never tastes water. Lives on the deserts. (Page
94.)

The Bushmen conceal water in ostrich eggs at regu¬
lar intervals across the desert, and so perform long
journeys over them safely. (Page 101.)

The hatching of ostrich eggs not left to heat of sun.
(Page 105.) The natives empty them by a small aper¬
ture at one end, fill with water, and cork up the hole
with grass. (Page 106.)

The Hottentots devoured the marrow of a koodoo
raw as a matter of course.1

The Bechuanas use “ the assagai,” “ a sort of light
spear or javelin ” with a shaft six feet long, which they
will send through a man’s body at a hundred yards.
(Page 201.)

The Bakatlas smelt and work in iron quite well;
make spears, battle-axes, knives, needles, etc., etc.
(Page 207.)

The skin of the eland just killed, like that of most
1 [Excursions, p. 225; Riv. 275, 276.]

JOURNAL

132

[Dec. 30

other antelopes, emits the most delicious perfume of
trees and grass. (Page 218.) 1

When waiting by night for elephants to approach a
fountain, he “ heard a low rumbling noise ...» caused
(as the Bechuanas affirmed) by the bowels of the ele¬
phants which were approaching the fountain.” (Page
261.)

“ A child can put a hundred of them [elephants] 2 to
flight by passing at a quarter of a mile to windward.”
(Page 263.)

It is incredible how many “goodly” trees an elephant
will destroy, sometimes wantonly. (265.)

An elephant’s friend will protect its wounded com¬
panion at the risk of its own life. (268.)

The rhinoceros-birds stick their bills in the ear of
the rhinoceros and wake him up when the hunter is
approaching. They live on ticks and other parasitic
insects on his body. He perfectly understands their
warning. He has chased a rhinoceros many miles on
horseback and fired many shots before he fell, and all
the while the birds remained by him, perched on his
back and sides, and as each bullet struck him they
ascended about six feet into the air, uttering a cry of
alarm, and then resumed their position. Sometimes
they were swept off his back by branches of trees. When
the rhinoceros was shot at midnight, they have remained
by his body thinking him asleep, and on the hunter’s
approaching in the morning have tried to wake him up.
(Page 293.)

1 [Excursions, p. 225 ; Riv. 276.]

* [Thoreau supplies the word.]

BLUE JAYS

133

1850]

The Bechuanas make a pipe in a few moments by
kneading moistened earth with their knuckles on a
twig, until a hole is established, then one end of the
aperture is enlarged with their fingers for a bowl.
(Page 306.)

Dec. 31. I observe that in the cut by Walden Pond
the sand and stones fall from the overhanging bank
and rest on the snow below; and thus, perchance, the
stratum deposited by the side of the road in the winter
can permanently be distinguished from the summer
one by some faint seam, to be referred to the peculiar
conditions under which it was deposited.

The pond has been frozen over since I was there last.

Certain meadows, as Heywood’s, contain warmer
water than others and are slow to freeze. I do not
remember to have crossed this with impunity in all
places. The brook that issues from it is still open
completely, though the thermometer was down to eight
below zero this morning.

The blue jays evidently notify each other of the
presence of an intruder, and will sometimes make a
great chattering about it, and so communicate the
alarm to other birds and to beasts.

Ill

JANUARY -APRIL, 1851
(2ET. 33)

Jan. 2. Saw at Clinton last night a room at the
gingham-mills which covers one and seven-eighths acres
and contains 578 looms, not to speak of spindles, both
throttle and mule. The rooms all together cover three
acres. They were using between three and four hundred
horse-power, and kept an engine of two hundred horse¬
power, with a wheel twenty-three feet in diameter and
a band ready to supply deficiencies, which have not
often occurred. Some portion of the machinery — I
think it was where the cotton was broken up, lightened
up, and mixed before being matted together — revolved
eighteen hundred times in a minute.

I first saw the pattern room where patterns are made
by a hand loom. There were two styles of warps ready
for the woof or filling. The operator must count the
threads of the woof, which in the mill is done by the ma¬
chinery. It was the ancient art of weaving, the shuttle
flying back and forth, putting in the filling. As long as
the warp is the same, it is but one “ style,” so called.

The cotton should possess a long staple and be clean
and free from seed. The Sea Island cotton has a long
staple and is valuable for thread. Many bales are
thoroughly mixed to make the goods of one quality.
The cotton is then tom to pieces and thoroughly light-

A GINGHAM-MILL

135

1851]

ened up by cylinders armed with hooks and by fans;
then spread, a certain weight on a square yard, and
matted together, and torn up and matted together again
two or three times over; then the matted cotton fed to
a cylindrical card, a very thin web of it, which is gath¬
ered into a copper trough, making six (the six-card
machines) flat, rope-like bands, which are united into
one at the railway head and drawn. And this operation
of uniting and drawing or stretching goes on from one
machine to another until the thread is spun, which
is then dyed (calico is printed after being woven), —
having been wound off on to reels and so made into
skeins, — dyed and dried by steam; then, by machinery,
wound on to spools for the warp and the woof. From
a great many spools the warp is drawn off over cylinders
and different-colored threads properly mixed and ar¬
ranged. Then the ends of the warp are drawn through
the harness of the loom by hand. The operator knows
the succession of red, blue, green, etc., threads, having
the numbers given her, and draws them through the
harness accordingly, keeping count. Then the woof is
put in, or it is woven ! ! Then the inequalities or nubs
are picked off by girls. If they discover any imperfection,
they tag it, and if necessary the wages of the weaver are
reduced. Now, I think, it is passed over a red-hot iron
cylinder, and the fuzz singed off, then washed with
wheels with cold water; then the water forced out by
centrifugal force within horizontal wheels. Then it is
starched, the ends stitched together by machinery; then
stretched smooth, dried, and ironed by machinery;
then measured, folded, and packed.

136

JOURNAL

[Jan. 2

This the agent, Forbes, says is the best gingham-mill
in this country. The goods are better than the imported.
The English have even stolen their name Lancaster
Mills, calling them “ Laneasterian.”

The machinery is some of it peculiar, part of the
throttle spindles ( ?) for instance.

The coach-lace-mill, only place in this country where
it is made by machinery; made of thread of different
materials, as cotton, worsted, linen, as well as colors,
the raised figure produced by needles inserted woof
fashion. Well worth examining further. Also pantaloon
stuffs made in same mill and dyed after being woven,
the woolen not taking the same dye with the cotton;
hence a slight parti-colored appearance. These goods
are sheared, i. e. a part of the nap taken off, making
them smoother. Pressed between pasteboards.

The Brussels carpets made at the carpet-factory said
to be the best in the world. Made like coach lace, only
wider.

Erastus (?) Bigelow inventor of what is new in the
above machinery ; and, with his brother and another,
owner of the carpet-factory.

I am struck by the fact that no work has been shirked
when a piece of cloth is produced. Every thread has
been counted in the finest web; it has not been matted
together. The operator has succeeded only by patience,
perseverance, and fidelity.

The direction in which a railroad runs, though
intersecting another at right angles, may cause that
one will be blocked up with snow and the other be

BEHAVIOR

137

1851]

comparatively open even for great distances, depending
on the direction of prevailing winds and valleys. There
are the Fitchburg and Nashua & Worcester.

Jan. 4. The longest silence is the most pertinent
question most pertinently put. Emphatically silent. The
most important question, whose answers concern us
more than any, are never put in any other way.

It is difficult for two strangers, mutually well dis¬
posed, so truly to bear themselves toward each other
that a feeling of falseness and hollowness shall not soon
spring up between them. The least anxiety to behave
truly vitiates the relation. I think of those to whom I am
at the moment truly related, with a joy never expressed
and never to be expressed, before I fall asleep at night,
though I am hardly on speaking terms with them these
years. When I think of it, I am truly related to them.

Jan. 5. The catkins of the alders are now frozen
stiff!!

Almost all that my neighbors call good I believe in
my soul to be bad. If I repent of anything, it is of my
good behavior. What demon possessed me that I be¬
haved so well ? You may say the wisest thing you can,
old man, — you who have lived seventy years, not with¬
out honor of a kind, — I hear an irresistible voice, the
voice of my destiny, which invites me away from all that.1

Jan. 7. The snow is sixteen inches deep at least, but
[it] is a mild and genial afternoon, as if it were the
1 [ Walden , p. 11; Riv. 19.]

188

JOURNAL

[Jan. 7

beginning of a January thaw. Take away the snow and
it would not be winter but like many days in the fall.
The birds acknowledge the difference in the air; the
jays are more noisy, and the chickadees are oftener
heard.

Many herbs are not crushed by the snow.

I do not remember to have seen fleas except when the
weather was mild and the snow damp.

I must live above all in the present.

Science does not embody all that men know, only
what is for men of science. The woodman tells me how
he caught trout in a box trap, how he made his trough
for maple sap of pine logs, and the spouts of sumach or
white ash, which have a large pith. He can relate his
facts to human life.

The knowledge of an unlearned man is living and
luxuriant like a forest, but covered with mosses and
lichens and for the most part inaccessible and going
to waste; the knowledge of the man of science is like
timber collected in yards for public works, which still
supports a green sprout here and there, but even this is
liable to dry rot.

I felt my spirits rise when I had got off the road
into the open fields, and the sky had a new appearance.
I stepped along more buoyantly. There was a warm
sunset over the wooded valleys, a yellowish tinge on the
pines. Reddish dun-colored clouds like dusky flames
stood over it. And then streaks of blue sky were seen
here and there. The life, the joy, that is in blue sky
after a storm! There is no account of the blue sky in

1851] SNOW-COVERED HILLS 139

history. Before I walked in the ruts of travel; now I
adventured. This evening a fog comes up from the
south.

If I have any conversation with a scamp in my walk,
my afternoon is wont to be spoiled.

The squirrels and apparently the rabbits have got
all the frozen apples in the hollow behind Miles’s.
The rabbits appear to have devoured what the squirrels
dropped and left. I see the tracks of both leading from
the woods on all sides to the apple trees.

Jan . 8. The smilax (green-briar) berries still hang
on like small grapes. The thorn of this vine is very
perfect, like a straight dagger.

The light of the setting sun falling on the snow-banks
to-day made them glow ahnost yellow.

The hills seen from Fair Haven Pond make a wholly
new landscape; covered with snow and yellowish
green or brown pines and shrub oaks, they look higher
and more massive. Their white mantle relates them to
the clouds in the horizon and to the sky. Perchance
what is light-colored looks loftier than what is dark.

You might say of a very old and withered man or
woman that they hung on like a shrub oak leaf, almost
to a second spring. There was still a little life in the
heel of the leaf-stalk.

Jan. 10. The snow shows how much of the moun¬
tains in the horizon are covered with forest. I can also
see plainer as I stand on a hill what proportion of the
township is in forest.

140

JOURNAL

[Jan. 10

Got some excellent frozen-thawed apples off of
Annursnack, soft and luscious as a custard and free
from worms and rot. Saw a partridge budding, but
they did not appear to have pecked the apples.

There was a remarkable sunset; a mother-of-pearl
sky seen over the Price farm; some small clouds, as
well as the edges of large ones, most brilliantly painted
with mother-of-pearl tints through and through. I never
saw the like before. Who can foretell the sunset, —
what it will be ?

The near and bare hills covered with snow look
like mountains, but the mountains in the horizon do
not look higher than hills.

I frequently see a hole in the snow where a partridge
has squatted, the mark or form of her tail very distinct.

The chivalric and heroic spirit, which once belonged
to the chevalier or rider only, seems now to reside in the
walker. To represent the chivalric spirit we have no
longer a knight, but a walker, errant.1 I speak not of
pedestrianism, or of walking a thousand miles in a
thousand successive hours.

The Adam who daily takes a turn in his garden.

Methinks I would not accept of the gift of life, if I were
required to spend as large a portion of it sitting foot up
or with my legs crossed, as the shoemakers and tailors
do. As well be tied neck and heels together and cast into
the sea. Making acquaintance with my extremities.

I have met with but one or two persons in the course
of my life who understood the art of taking walks daily,
— not [to] exercise the legs or body merely, nor barely to
1 [. Excursions , p. 206; Riv. 253.]

SAUNTERING

141

1851]

recruit the spirits, but positively to exercise both body
and spirit, and to succeed to the highest and worthiest
ends by the abandonment of all specific ends, — who had
a genius, so to speak, for sauntering. And this word
“saunter,” by the way, is happily derived “from idle
people who roved about the country [in the Middle
Ages] 1 and asked charity under pretence of going a la
Sainte Terre” to the Holy Land, till, perchance, the
children exclaimed, “There goes a Sainte-T errer” a
Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land
in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers
and vagabonds.2

[Four pages missing.]

[Perhaps I am more] than usually jealous of my
freedom. I feel that my connections with and obliga¬
tions to society are at present very slight and transient.
Those slight labors which afford me a livelihood, and
by which I am serviceable to my contemporaries, are as
yet a pleasure to me, and I am not often reminded that
they are a necessity. So far I am successful, and only
he is successful in his business who makes that pursuit
which affords him the highest pleasure sustain him.
But I foresee that if my wants should be much increased
the labor required to supply them would become a
drudgery. If I should sell both my forenoons and
afternoons to society, neglecting my peculiar calling, there
would be nothing left worth living for. I trust that I
shall never thus sell my birthright for a mess of pottage.3

1 [The brackets are Thoreau’s.] 2 [Excursions, p. 205; Riv. 251.]

8 [Cape Cod, and Miscellanies , pp. 460, 461; Misc., Riv. 260.]

142

JOURNAL

[1851

F. Andrew Michaux says that “the species of large
trees are much more numerous in North America than
in Europe: in the United States there are more than
one hundred and forty species that exceed thirty feet in
height; in France there are but thirty that attain this
size, of which eighteen enter into the composition of the
forests, and seven only are employed in building.” 1

The perfect resemblance of the chestnut, beech, and
hornbeam in Europe and the United States rendered a
separate figure unnecessary.

He says the white oak “is the only oak on which a
few of the dried leaves persist till the circulation is
renewed in the spring.”

Had often heard his father say that “the fruit of
the common European walnut, in its natural state, is
harder than that of the American species just mentioned
[the pacane-nut hickory] 2 and inferior to it in size and
quality.”

The arts teach us a thousand lessons. Not a yard of
cloth can be woven without the most thorough fidelity
in the weaver. The ship must be made absolutely tight
before it is launched.

It is an important difference between two characters
that the one is satisfied with a happy but level success
but the other as constantly elevates his aim. Though
my fife is low, if my spirit looks upward habitually at
an elevated angle, it is as it were redeemed. When the

1 f Excursions , p. 220; Riv. 269, 270.]

* [The bracketed words are Thoreau’s.]

1851] DIVINE COMMUNICATIONS 143

desire to be better than we are is really sincere we are
instantly elevated, and so far better already.

I lose my friends, of course, as much by my own ill
treatment and ill valuing of them, prophaning of them,
cheapening of them, as by their cheapening of them¬
selves, till at last, when I am prepared to [do] them
justice, I am permitted to deal only with the memories
of themselves, their ideals still surviving in me, no longer
with their actual selves. We exclude ourselves, as the
child said of the stream in which he bathed head or
foot. (Vide Confucius.)

It is something to know when you are addressed by
Divinity and not by a common traveller. I went down
cellar just now to get an armful of wood and, passing
the brick piers with my wood and candle, I heard,
methought, a commonplace suggestion, but when, as
it were by accident, I reverently attended to the hint,
I found that it was the voice of a god who had followed
me down cellar to speak to me. How many communica¬
tions may we not lose through inattention!

I would fain keep a journal which should contain
those thoughts and impressions which I am most liable
to forget that I have had; which would have in one
sense the greatest remoteness, in another, the greatest
nearness to me.

’T is healthy to be sick sometimes.

I do not know but the reason why I love some Latin
verses more than whole English poems is simply in the
elegant terseness and conciseness of the language.

JOURNAL

144

[1851

an advantage which the individual appears to have
shared with his nation.

When we can no longer ramble in the fields of nature,
we ramble in the fields of thought and literature. The
old become readers. Our heads retain their strength
when our legs have become weak.

English literature from the days of the minstrels to
the Lake Poets, Chaucer and Spenser and Shakspeare
and Milton included, breathes no quite fresh and, in
this sense, wild strain. It is an essentially tame and
civilized literature, reflecting Greece and Rome. Her
wilderness is a greenwood, her wild man a Robin Hood.
There is plenty of genial love of nature in her poets,
but [not so much of nature herself.] Her chronicles
inform us when her wild animals, but not when the
wild man in her, became extinct.1 There was need of
America. I cannot think of any poetry which adequately
expresses this yearning for the Wild, the wUde.2

Ovid says : —

Nilus in extremum fugit perterritus orbem,

Occuluitque caput, quod adhuc latet.

(Nilus, terrified, fled to the extremity of the globe,

And hid his head, which is still concealed.)

And we moderns must repeat, “ Quod adhuc latet."

Phaeton’s epitaph : —

Hie situs est Phaeton, currus auriga patemi;

Quern si non tenuit, magnis tamen excidit ausis.

1 [. Excursions , p. 231; Riv. 283, 284.]

2 [Excursions, p. 232; Riv. 284.]

1851] QUOTATIONS FROM OVID 145

His sister Lampetie subitd radice retenta est. All the
sisters were changed to trees while they were in vain
beseeching their mother not to break their branches.
Cortex in verba novissima venit.

His brother Cycnus, lamenting the death of Phaeton
killed by Jove’s lightning, and the metamorphosis of
his sisters, was changed into a swan, —

nec se coeloque, Jovique
Credit, ut injuste missi memor ignis ab illo.

(Nor trusts himself to the heavens
Nor to Jove, as if remembering the fire unjustly sent by him),

i. e. against Phaeton. (Reason why the swan does not

fly-)

. . . precibusque minas regaliter addit.

([Jove] royally adds threats to prayers.)

Callisto miles erat Phoebes , i. e. a huntress.

. . (neque enim coelestia tingi
Ora decet lachrymis).

(For it is not becoming that the faces of the celestials be tinged
with tears, — keep a stiff upper lip.)

How much more fertile a nature has Grecian mythol¬
ogy its root in than English literature ! The nature which
inspired mythology still flourishes. Mythology is the
crop which the Old World bore before its soil was
exhausted. The West is preparing to add its fables
to those of the East.1 A more fertile nature than the
Mississippi Valley.

None of your four-hoifr nights for me. The wise man
1 [Excursions, pp. 232, 233; Riv. 285.]

JOURNAL

146

[1851

will take a fool’s allowance. The corn would not come
to much if the nights were but four hours long.

The soil in which those fables grew is deep and inex¬
haustible.

Lead cast by the Balearian sling : —

Volat illud, et incandescit eundo;

Et, quos non habuit, sub nubibus invenit ignes.

(That flies and grows hot with going.

And fires which it had not finds amid the clouds.)

I went some months ago to see a panorama of the
Rhine. It was like a dream of the Middle Ages. I
floated down its historic stream in something more than
imagination, under bridges built by the Romans and
repaired by later heroes, past cities and castles whose
very names were music to me, — made my ears tingle,
— and each of which was the subject of a legend. There
seemed to come up from its waters and its vine-clad
hills and valleys a hushed music as of crusaders depart¬
ing for the Holy Land. There were Ehrenbreitstein and
Rolandseck and Coblentz, which I knew only in history.
I floated along through the moonlight of history under
the spell of enchantment. It was as if I remembered
a glorious dream, — as if I had been transported to a
heroic age and breathed an atmosphere of chivalry.
Those times appeared far more poetic and heroic than
these.

Soon after I went to see the panorama of the Missis¬
sippi, and as I fitly worked my way upward in the light
of to-day, and saw the steamboats wooding up, and
looked up the Ohio and the Missouri, and saw its

1851] THE FERTILITY OF AMERICA . 147

unpeopled cliffs, and counted the rising cities,1 and saw
the Indians removing west across the stream, and heard
the legends of Dubuque and of Wenona’s Cliff, — still
thinking more of the future than of the past or present,

— I saw that this was a Rhine stream of a different
kind.2

The Old World, with its vast deserts and its arid and
elevated steppes and table-lands, contrasted with the
New World with its humid and fertile valleys and
savannas and prairies and its boundless primitive for¬
ests, is like the exhausted Indian com lands contrasted
with the peat meadows. America requires some of the
sand of the Old World to be carted on to her rich but as
yet unassimilated meadows.

Guyot says, “ The Baltic Sea has a depth of only 120
feet between the coasts of Germany and those of Swe¬
den ” (page 82). “ The Adriatic, between Venice and
Trieste, has a depth of only 130 feet.” “ Between France
and England, the greatest depth does not exceed 300
feet.” The most extensive forest, “the most gigantic
wilderness,” on the earth is in the basin of the Amazon, .
and extends almost unbroken more than fifteen hundred
miles. South America the kingdom of palms; nowhere
a greater number of species. “ This is a sign of the pre¬
ponderating development of leaves over every other part
of the vegetable growth; of that expansion of foliage,
of that leafiness , peculiar to warm and moist climates.

1 The fresh ruins of Nauvoo, the bright brick towns. Davenport?

2 [Excursions, pp. 223, 224; Riv. 274.]

148 , JOURNAL [1851

America has no plants with slender, shrunken leaves,
like those of Africa and New Holland. The Ericas, or
heather, so common, so varied, so characteristic of the
flora of the Cape of Good Hope, is a form unknown
to the New World. There is nothing resembling those
Metrosideri of Africa, those dry Myrtles (Eucalyptus)
and willow-leaved acacias, whose flowers shine with the
liveliest colors, but their narrow foliage, turned edge¬
wise to the vertical sun, casts no shadow.” 1

The white man derives his nourishment from the
earth, — from the roots and grains, the potato and
wheat and com and rice and sugar, which often grow
in fertile and pestilential river bottoms fatal to the
life of the cultivator. The Indian has but a slender
hold on the earth. He derives his nourishment in great
part but indirectly from her, through the animals he
hunts.2

“ Compared with the Old World, the New World is
the humid side of our planet, the oceanic , vegetative
world, the passive element awaiting the excitement of a
livelier impulse from without.” 8

“For the American, this task is to work the virgin
soil.”

“Agriculture here already assumes proportions un¬
known everywhere else.” 4

1 [Arnold Guyot, The Earth and Man. Translated by C. C.
Felton.] * My own.

3 [Guyot, op. cti .] 4 [Guyot, op. cit.]

149

1851] SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE

Feb. 9. The last half of January was warm and
thawy. The swift streams were open, and the muskrats
were seen swimming and diving and bringing up clams,
leaving their shells on the ice. We had now forgotten
summer and autumn, but had already begun to antici¬
pate spring. Fishermen improved the warmer weather
to fish for pickerel through the ice. Before it was only
the autumn landscape with a thin layer of snow upon it;
we saw the withered flowers through it; but now we do
not think of autumn when we look on this snow. That
earth is effectually buried. It is midwinter. Within a
few days the cold has set in stronger than ever, though
the days are much longer now. Now I travel across the
fields on the crust which has frozen since the January
thaw, and I can cross the river in most places. It is
easier to get about the country th^n at any other season,
— easier than in summer, because the rivers and mead¬
ows are frozen and there is no high grass or other crops
to be avoided; easier than in December before the crust
was frozen.

Sir John Mandeville says, “In fro what partie of the
earth that men dwell, outher aboven or benethen, it
seemeth always to hem that dwellen there, that they
gon more right than any other folk.” Again, “ Apd yee
shulle undirstonde, that of all theise contrees, and of
all theise yles, and of all the dyverse folk, that I have
spoken of before, and of dyverse laws and of dyverse
beleeves that thei have, yit is there non of hem alle, but
that thei have sum resoun within hem and understond-
inge, but gif it be the fewere.”

150

JOURNAL

[Feb.

I have heard that there is a Society for the Diffusion
of Useful Knowledge. It is said that knowledge is power
and the like. Methinks there is equal need of a Society
for the Diffusion of Useful Ignorance, for what is most
of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we
know something, which robs us of the advantages of our
actual ignorance.1

For a man’s ignorance sometimes is not only useful
but beautiful, while his knowledge is oftentimes worse
than useless, beside being ugly.2 In reference to impor¬
tant things, whose knowledge amounts to more than a
consciousness of his ignorance? Yet what more re¬
freshing and inspiring knowledge than this ?

How often are we wise as serpents without being
harmless as doves!

Donne says, “ Who are a little wise the best fools be.”
Cudworth says, “ We have all of us by nature /xavrev/xd
re (as both Plato and Aristotle call it), a certain divina¬
tion, presage and parturient vaticination in our minds,
of some higher good and perfection than either power
or knowledge.” Aristotle himself declares, that there is
\6yov tl Kpel ttov, which is Xdyov apxq, — (something better
than reason and knowledge, which is the principle and
original of all). Lavater says, “ W ho finds the clearest
not clear, thinks the darkest not obscure.”

My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my
desire to commune with the spirit of the universe, to

1 [Excursions, p. 239; Riv. 293.]

* [Excursions, p. 240; Riv. 294.]

THE SHE WOLF

151

1851]

be intoxicated even with the fumes, call it, of that divine
nectar, to bear my head through atmospheres and over
heights unknown to my feet, is perennial and constant.1

It is remarkable how few events or crises there are in
our minds’ histories, how little exercised we have been
in our minds, how few experiences we have had.2

[Four pages missing.]

The story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by
a wolf is not a mere fable; the founders of every state
which has risen to eminence have drawn their nourish¬
ment and vigor from a similar source. It is because
the children of the empire were not suckled by wolves
that they were conquered and displaced by the children
of the northern forests who were.3

America is the she wolf to-day, and the children of
exhausted Europe exposed on her uninhabited and
savage shores are the Romulus and Remus who, having
derived new life and vigor from her breast, have founded
a new Rome in the West.

It is remarkable how few passages, comparatively
speaking, there are in the best literature of the day
which betray any intimacy with Nature.

It is apparent enough to me that only one or two of
my townsmen or acquaintances — not more than one
in many thousand men, indeed — feel or at least obey
any strong attraction drawing them toward the forest or
to Nature, but all, almost without exception, gravitate

1 [Excursions, p. 240; Riv. 294.]

2 [Excursions, p. 241; Riv. 295.]

8 [Excursions, pp. 224, 225; Riv. 275.]

1 52

JOURNAL

[Feb.

exclusively toward men, or society.1 The young men of
Concord and in other towns do not walk in the woods,
but congregate in shops and offices. They suck one
another. Their strongest attraction is toward the mill-
dam. A thousand assemble about the fountain in the
public square, — the town pump, — be it full or dry,
clear or turbid, every morning, but not one in a thousand
is in the meanwhile drinking at that fountain’s head. It
is hard for the young, aye, and the old, man in the
outskirts to keep away from the mill-dam a whole day;
but he will find some excuse, as an ounce of cloves that
might be wanted, or a New England Farmer still in the
office, to tackle up the horse, or even go afoot, but he
will go at some rate. This is not bad comparatively;
this is because he cannot do better. In spite of his hoeing
and chopping, he is unexpressed and undeveloped.

I do not know where to find in any literature, whether
ancient or modem, any adequate account of that Nature
with which I am acquainted. Mythology comes nearest
to it of any.2

The actual life of men is not without a dramatic inter¬
est at least to the thinker. It is not always and every¬
where prosaic. Seventy thousand pilgrims proceed
annually to Mecca from the various nations of Islam.
But this is not so significant as the far simpler and more
unpretending pilgrimage to the shrines of some obscure
individual, which yet makes no bustle in the world.

I believe that Adam in paradise was not so favor¬
ably situated on the whole as is the backwoodsman

1 [Excursions, p. 241; Riv. 296.]
a [Excursions, p. 232; Riv. 284, 285.]

1851] THE EDGE OF THE MEADOW 153

in America.1 You all know how miserably the former
turned out, — or was turned out, — but there is some
consolation at least in the fact that it yet remains to be
seen how the western Adam in the wilderness will turn
out.

In Adam’s fall
We sinned all.

In the new Adam’s rise
We shall all reach the skies.

An infusion of hemlock in our tea, if we must drink
tea, — not the poison hemlock, but the hemlock spruce,
I mean,2 — or perchance the Arbor-Vitse, the tree of
life, — is what we want.

Feb. 12. Wednesday. A beautiful day, with but little
snow or ice on the ground. Though the air is sharp, as
the earth is half bare the hens have strayed to some
distance from the barns. The hens, standing around
their lord and pluming themselves and still fretting a
little, strive to fetch the year about.

A thaw has nearly washed away the snow and raised
the river and the brooks and flooded the meadows,
covering the old ice, which is still fast to the bottom.

I find that it is an excellent walk for variety and
novelty and wildness, to keep round the edge of the
meadow, — the ice not being strong enough to bear and
transparent as water, — on the bare ground or snow,
just between the highest water mark and the present
water line, — a narrow, meandering walk, rich in unex-

1 [. Excursions , p. 223; Riv. 273.]

3 [Excursions, p. 225; Riv. 275.]

154

JOURNAL

[Feb. 12

pected views and objects. The line of rubbish which
marks the higher tides — withered flags and reeds and
twigs and cranberries — is to my eyes a very agreeable
and significant line, which Nature traces along the
edge of the meadows. It is a strongly marked, endur¬
ing natural line, which in summer reminds me that
the water has once stood over where I walk. Sometimes
the grooved trees tell the same tale. The wrecks of the
meadow, which fill a thousand coves, and tell a thou¬
sand tales to those who can read them. Our prairial,
mediterranean shore. The gentle rise of water around
the trees in the meadow, where oaks and maples stand
far out in the sea, and young elms sometimes are seen
standing close around some rock which lifts its head
above the water, as if protecting it, preventing it from
being washed away, though in truth they owe their ori¬
gin and preservation to it. It first invited and detained
their seed, and now preserves the soil in which they
grow. A pleasant reminiscence of the rise of waters, to
go up one side of the river and down the other, following
this way, which meanders so much more than the river
itself. If you cannot go on the ice, you are then gently
compelled to take this course, which is on the whole
more beautiful, — to follow the sinuosities of the meadow.
Between the highest water mark and the present water
line is a space generally from a few feet to a few rods in
width. When the water comes over the road, then my
spirits rise, — when the fences are carried away. A prai¬
rial walk. Saw a caterpillar crawling about on the snow.

The earth is so bare that it makes an impression on
me as if it were catching cold.

155

1851] WATERFALLS WITHIN US

I saw to-day something new to me as I walked along
the edge of the meadow. Every half-mile or so along the
channel of the river I saw at a distance where appar¬
ently the ice had been broken up while freezing by the
pressure of other ice, — thin cakes of ice forced up on
their edges and reflecting the sun like so many mirrors,
whole fleets of shining sails, giving a very lively appear¬
ance to the river, — where for a dozen rods the flakes
of ice stood on their edges, like a fleet beating up-stream
against the sun, a fleet of ice-boats.

It is remarkable that the cracks in the ice on the
meadows sometimes may be traced a dozen rods from
the water through the snow in the neighboring fields.

It is only necessary that man should start a fence that
Nature should carry it on and complete it. The farmer
cannot plow quite up to the rails or wall which he
himself has placed, and hence it often becomes a hedge¬
row and sometimes a coppice.

I found to-day apples still green under the snow, and
others frozen and thawed, sweeter far than when sound,
— a sugary sweetness.1

There is something more than association at the bot¬
tom of the excitement which the roar of a cataract pro¬
duces. It is allied to the circulation in our veins. We
have a waterfall which corresponds even to Niagara
somewhere within us.2 It is astonishing what a rush and
tumult a slight inclination will produce in a swollen
brook. How it proclaims its glee, its boisterousness,
rushing headlong in its prodigal course as if it would
exhaust itself in half an hour! How it spends itself! I
1 [See Excursions, p. 319; Riv. 392.] 2 [See p. 300.]

156

JOURNAL

[Feb. 12

would say to the orator and poet. Flow freely and
lavishly as a brook that is full, — without stint. Per¬
chance I have stumbled upon the origin of the word
“lavish.” It does not hesitate to tumble down the
steepest precipice and roar or tinkle as it goes, for fear it
will exhaust its fountain. The impetuosity of descend¬
ing water even by the slightest inclination ! It seems to
flow with ever increasing rapidity.

It is difficult to believe what philosophers assert, that
it is merely a difference in the form of the elementary
particles — as whether they are square or globular —
which makes the difference between the steadfast, ever¬
lasting, and reposing hillside and the impetuous torrent
which tumbles down it.

It is refreshing to walk over sprout-lands, where oak
and chestnut sprouts are mounting swiftly up again into
the sky, and already perchance their sere leaves begin to
rustle in the breeze and reflect the light on the hillsides.

“Heroic underwoods that take the air
With freedom, nor respect their parents* death.** 1

I trust that the walkers of the present day are con¬
scious of the blessings which they enjoy in the com¬
parative freedom with which they can ramble over the
country and enjoy the landscape, anticipating with
compassion that future day when possibly it will be
partitioned off into so-called pleasure-grounds, where
only a few may enjoy the narrow and exclusive pleasure
which is compatible with ownership, — when walking
over the surface of God’s earth shall be construed to
1 [W. E. Channing, “Walden Spring.**]

157

1851] FLEETS OF ICE-FLAKES

mean trespassing on some gentleman’s grounds, when
fences shall be multiplied and man traps and other en¬
gines invented to confine men to the public road. I am
thankful that we have yet so much room in America.1

Feb. 13. Skated to Sudbury. A beautiful, summer-like
day. The meadows were frozen just enough to bear.
Examined now the fleets of ice-flakes close at hand.
They are a very singular and interesting phenomenon,
which I do not remember to have seen. I should say
that when the water was frozen about as thick as paste¬
board, a violent gust had here and there broken it up,
and while the wind and waves held it up on its edge, the
increasing cold froze it in firmly. So it seemed, for the
flakes were for the most part turned one way; i. e.
standing on one side, you saw only their edges, on
another — the northeast or southwest — their sides.
They were for the most part of a triangular form, like
a shoulder[s?’c]-of-mutton sail, slightly scalloped, like

shells. They looked like a fleet of a thousand mackerel-
fishers under a press of sail careering before a smacking
breeze. Sometimes the sun and wind had reduced them
to the thinness of writing-paper, and they fluttered and
rustled and tinkled merrily. I skated through them and
strewed their wrecks around. They appear to have been
elevated expressly to reflect the sun like mirrors, to adorn
the river and attract the eye of the skater. Who will say

[. Excursions , p. 216; Riv. 264, 265.]

158

JOURNAL

[Feb. 13

that their principal end is not answered when they excite
the admiration of the skater ? Every half-mile or mile,
as you skate up the river, you see these crystal fleets.
Nature is a great imitator and loves to repeat herself.
She wastes her wonders on the town. It impresses me
as one superiority in her art, if art it may be called, that
she does not require that man appreciate her, takes no
steps to attract his attention.

The trouble is in getting on and off the ice; when you
are once on you can go well enough. It melts round the
edges.

Again I saw to-day, half a mile off in Sudbury, a
sandy spot on the top of a hill, where I prophesied that
I should find traces of the Indians. When within a dozen
rods, I distinguished the foundation of a lodge, and
merely passing over it, I saw many fragments of the
arrowhead stone. I have frequently distinguished these
localities half a mile [off], gone forward, and picked up
arrowheads.

Saw in a warm, muddy brook in Sudbury, quite open
and exposed, the skunk-cabbage spathes above water.
The tops of the spathes were frost-bitten, but the fruit
[sic] sound. There was one partly expanded. The first
flower of the season ; for it is a flower. I doubt if there is
[a] month without its flower. Examined by the botany
all its parts, — the first flower I have seen. The Ictodes
foetidus.

Also mosses, mingled red and green. The red will
pass for the blossom.

As for antiquities, one of our old deserted country
roads, marked only by the parallel fences and cellar-hole

ANTIQUITY

159

1851]

with its bricks where the last inhabitant died, the vic¬
tim of intemperance, fifty years ago, with its bare and
exhausted fields stretching around, suggests to me an
antiquity greater and more remote from the America of
the newspapers than the tombs of Etruria. I insert the
rise and fall of Rome in the interval. This is the decline
and fall of the Roman Empire.

It is important to observe not only the subject of our
pure and unalloyed joys, but also the secret of any dis¬
satisfaction one may feel.

In society, in the best institutions of men, I remark a
certain precocity. When we should be growing children,
we are already little men. Infants as we are, we make
haste to be weaned from our great mother’s breast, and
cultivate our parts by intercourse with one another.

I have not much faith in the method of restoring
impoverished soils which relies on manuring mainly
and does not add some virgin soil or muck.

Many a poor, sore-eyed student that I have heard of
would grow faster, both intellectually and physically,
if, instead of sitting up so very late to study, he honestly
slumbered a fool’s allowance.1

I would not have every man cultivated, any more
than I would have every acre of earth cultivated. Some
must be preparing a mould by the annual decay of the
forests which they sustain.2

Saw half a dozen cows let out and standing about in a
retired meadow as in a cow-yard.

1 [Excursions, p. 238; Riv. 291.]

2 [Excursions, p. 238; Riv. 292.]

160

JOURNAL

[Feb. 14

Feb. 14. Consider the farmer, who is commonly
regarded as the healthiest man. He may be the tough¬
est, but he is not the healthiest. He has lost his elasti¬
city; he can neither run nor jump. Health is the free
use and command of all our faculties, and equal develop¬
ment. His is the health of the ox, an overworked buf¬
falo. His joints are stiff. The resemblance is true even
in particulars. He is cast away in a pair of cowhide
boots, and travels at an ox’s pace. Indeed, in some
places he puts his foot into the skin of an ox’s shin. It
would do him good to be thoroughly shampooed to
make him supple. His health is an insensibility to all
influence. But only the healthiest man in the world is
sensible to the finest influence; he who is affected by
more or less of electricity in the air.

We shall see but little way if we require to understand
what we see. How few things can a man measure with
the tape of his understanding! How many greater
things might he be seeing in the meanwhile!

One afternoon in the fall, November 21st, I saw Fair
Haven Pond with its island and meadow; between the
island and the shore, a strip of perfectly smooth water
in the lee of the island; and two hawks sailing over it;
and something more I saw which cannot easily be de¬
scribed, which made me say to myself that the land¬
scape could not be improved. I did not see how it could
be improved. Yet I do not know what these things can'
be; I begin to see such objects only when I leave off
understanding them, and afterwards remember that I
did not appreciate them before. But I get no further
than this. How adapted these forms and colors to our

EATING

161

1851]

eyes, a meadow and its islands ! What are these things ?
Yet the hawks and the ducks keep so aloof, and nature
is so reserved! We are made to love the river and the
meadow, as the wind to ripple the water.1

There is a difference between eating for strength and
from mere gluttony. The Hottentots eagerly devour
the marrow of the koodoo and other antelopes raw,
as a matter of course, and herein perchance have stolen
a march on the cooks of Paris. The eater of meat must
come to this. This is better than stall-fed cattle and
slaughter-house pork. Possibly they derive a certain
wild-animal vigor therefrom which the most artfully
cooked meats do not furnish.2

We learn by the January thaw that the winter is in¬
termittent and are reminded of other seasons. The back
of the winter is broken.

Feb. 15. Fatal is the discovery that our friend is
fallible, that he has prejudices. He is, then, only pre¬
judiced in our favor. What is the value of his esteem
who does not justly esteem another?

Alas! Alas! when my friend begins to deal in con¬
fessions, breaks silence, makes a theme of friendship
(which then is always something past), and descends to
merely human relations ! As long as there is a spark of
love remaining, cherish that alone. Only that can be
kindled into a flame. I thought that friendship, that
love was still possible between [us]. I thought that we
had not withdrawn very far asunder. But now that my
friend rashly, thoughtlessly, profanely speaks, recogniz-
1 [See p. 107.] a [. Excursions , p. 225; Riv. 275, 276.]

JOURNAL

162

[Feb. 15

ing the distance between us, that distance seems in¬
finitely increased.

Of our friends we do not incline to speak, to com¬
plain, to others; we would not disturb the foundations
of confidence that may still be.

Why should we not still continue to live with the in¬
tensity and rapidity of infants? Is not the world, are
not the heavens, as unfathomed as ever? Have we ex¬
hausted any joy, any sentiment?

The author of Festus well exclaims : —

“ Could we but think with the intensity
We love with, we might do great things, I think.”

Feb. 16. Do we call this the land of the free ? What
is it to be free from King George the Fourth and con¬
tinue the slaves of prejudice? What is it [to] be bom
free and equal, and not to live? WThat is the value of
any political freedom, but as a means to moral free¬
dom ? Is it a freedom to be slaves or a freedom to be
free, of which we boast ? We are a nation of politicians,
concerned about the outsides of freedom, the means
and outmost defenses of freedom. It is our children’s
children who may perchance be essentially free. We
tax ourselves unjustly. There is a part of us which is
not represented. It is taxation without representation.
We quarter troops upon ourselves. In respect to virtue
or true manhood, we are essentially provincial, not
metropolitan, — mere Jonathans. We are provincial,
because we do not find at home our standards; because

163

1851] MANNERS AND CHARACTER

we do not worship truth but the reflection of truth;
because we are absorbed in and narrowed by trade
and commerce and agriculture, which are but means and
not the end. We are essentially provincial, I say, and
so is the English Parliament. Mere country bumpkins
they betray themselves, when any more important ques¬
tion arises for them to settle. Their natures are sub¬
dued to what they work in!

The finest manners in the world are awkwardness
and fatuity when contrasted with a finer intelligence.
They appear but as the fashions of past days, — mere
courtliness, small-fclothes, and knee-buckles, — have
the vice of getting out of date; an attitude merely. The
vice of manners is that they are continually deserted
by the character; they are cast-off clothes or shells,
claiming the respect of the living creature. You are
presented with the shells instead of the meat, and it
is no excuse generally that, in the case of some fish,
the shells are of more worth than the meat. The man
who thrusts his manners upon me does as if he were
to insist on introducing me to his cabinet of curiosities,
when I wish to see himself. Manners are conscious;
character is unconscious.1

My neighbor does not recover from his formal bow
so soon as I do from the pleasure of meeting him.

Feb. 18. Tuesday. Ground nearly bare of snow.
Pleasant day with a strong south wind. Skated, though
the ice was soft in spots. Saw the skunk-cabbage in
flower. Gathered nuts and apples on the bare ground,
1 [Cape Cod , and Miscellanies , pp. 476-478; Misc., Riv. 280-282.]

JOURNAL

164

[Feb. 18

still sound and preserving their colors, red and green,
many of them.

Yesterday the river was over the road by Hubbard’s
Bridge.

Surveyed White Pond yesterday, Februaiy 17th.

There is little or nothing to be remembered written
on the subject of getting an honest living. Neither the
New Testament nor Poor Richard speaks to our con¬
dition. I cannot think of a single page which enter¬
tains, much less answers, the questions which I put to
myself on this subject. How to make the getting our
living poetic! for if it is not poetic, it is not life but
death that we get. Is it that men are too disgusted with
their experience to speak of it ? or that commonly they
do not question the common modes ? The most prac¬
tically important of all questions, it seems to me, is
how shall I get my living, and yet I find little or nothing
said to the purpose in any book. Those who are living
on the interest of money inherited, or dishonestly, i. e.
by false methods, acquired, are of course incompetent
to answer it. I consider that society with all its arts,
has done nothing for us in this respect. One would
think, from looking at literature, that this question had
never disturbed a solitary individual’s musings. Cold
and hunger seem more friendly to my nature than those
methods which men have adopted and advise to ward
them off.1 If it were not that I desire to do something
here, — accomplish some work, — I should certainly
prefer to suffer and die rather than be at the pains to
get a living by the modes men propose.

1 [Cape Cod and Miscellanies , p. 462; Misc ., Riv. 262.]

ACTINISM

165

1851]

There may be an excess even of informing light.

Niepce, a Frenchman, announced that “no sub¬
stance can be exposed to the sun’s rays without under¬
going a chemical change.” Granite rocks and stone
structures and statues of metal, etc., “ are,” says Robert
Hunt, “all alike destructively acted upon during the
hours of sunshine, and, but for provisions of nature no
less wonderful, would soon perish under the delicate
touch of the most subtile of the agencies of the uni¬
verse.” But Niepce showed, says Hunt, “that those
bodies which underwent this change during daylight
possessed the power of restoring themselves to their
original conditions during the hours of night, when
this excitement was no longer influencing them.” So,
in the case of the daguerreotype, “the picture which
we receive to-night, unless we adopt some method of
securing its permanency, fades away before the morn¬
ing, and we try to restore it in vain.” (Infers) “the
hours of darkness are as necessary to the inorganic
creation as we know night and sleep are to the organic
kingdom.” Such is the influence of “actinism,” that
power in the sun’s rays which produces a chemical
effect.1

Feb. 25. A very windy day. A slight snow which
fell last night was melted at noon. A strong, gusty
wind; the waves on the meadows make a fine show.
I saw at Hubbard’s Bridge that all the ice had been
blown up-stream from the meadows, and was col¬
lected over the channel against the bridge in large
1 [Excursions, p. 238; Riv. 292.]

166

JOURNAL

[Feb. 25

cakes. These were covered and intermingled with a
remarkable quantity of the meadow’s crust. There
was no ice to be seen up-stream and no more down¬
stream.

The meadows have been flooded for a fortnight, and
this water has been frozen barely thick enough to bear
once only. The old ice on the meadows was covered
several feet deep. I observed from the bridge, a few
rods off northward, what looked like an island directly
over the channel. It was the crust of the meadow afloat.
I reached [it] with a little risk and found it to be four
rods long by one broad, — the surface of the meadow
with cranberry vines, etc., all connected and in their
natural position, and no ice visible but around its edges.
It appeared to be the frozen crust (which was separated
from the unfrozen soil as ice is from the water beneath),
buoyed up ( ?), perchance, by the ice around its edges
frozen to the stubble. Was there any pure ice under
it ? Had there been any above it ? Will frozen meadow
float ? Had ice which originally supported it from above
melted except about the edges ? When the ice melts or
the soil thaws, of course it falls to the bottom, wherever
it may be. Here is another agent employed in the dis¬
tribution of plants. I have seen where a smooth shore
which I frequented for bathing was in one season
strewn with these hummocks, bearing the button-bush
with them, which have now changed the character of
the shore. There were many rushes and lily-pad stems
on the ice. Had the ice formed about them as they grew,
broken them off when it floated away, and so they were
strewn about on it?

FLOATING MEADOW

167

1851]

Feb. 26. Wednesday. Examined the floating meadow
again to-day. It is more than a foot thick, the under
part much mixed with ice, — ice and muck. It ap¬
peared to me that the meadow surface had been heaved
by the frost, and then the water had run down and
under it, and finally, when the ice rose, lifted it up,
wherever there was ice enough mixed with it to float it.
I saw large cakes of ice with other large cakes, the
latter as big as a table, on top of them. Probably the
former rose while the latter were already floating about.
The plants scattered about were bulrushes and lily-pad
stems.

Saw five red-wings and a song sparrow( ?) this after¬
noon.

Feb. 21. Saw to-day on Pine Hill behind Mr. Joseph
Merriam’s house a Norway pine, the first I have seen
in Concord. Mr. Gleason pointed it out to me as a
singular pine which he did not know the name of. It
was a veiy handsome tree, about twenty-five feet high.
E. Wood thinks that he has lost the surface of two acres
of his meadow by the ice. Got fifteen cartloads out of
a hummock left on another meadow. Blue-joint was
introduced into the first meadow where it did not grow
before.

Of two men, one of whom knows nothing about a
subject, and, what is extremely rare, knows that he
knows nothing, and the other really knows something
about it, but thinks that he knows all, — what great
advantage has the latter over the former ? which is the

168

JOURNAL

[1851

best to deal with? I do not know that knowledge
amounts to anything more definite than a novel and
grand surprise, or a sudden revelation of the insuffi¬
ciency of all that we had called knowledge before; an
indefinite sense of the grandeur and glory of the universe.
It is the lighting up of the mist by the sun. But man
cannot be said to know in any higher sense, [any more]
than he can look serenely and with impunity in the face
of the sun.1

A culture which imports much muck from the mead¬
ows and deepens the soil, not that which trusts to heat¬
ing manures and improved agricultural implements
only.

How, when a man purchases a thing, he is determined
to get and get hold of it, using how many expletives and
how long a string of synonymous or similar terms sig¬
nifying possession, in the legal process ! What s mine ’s
my own. An old deed of a small piece of swamp land,
which I have lately surveyed at the risk of being mired
past recovery, says that “ the said Spaulding his Heirs
and Assigns, shall and may from this ( ?) time, and at
all times forever hereafter, by force and virtue of these
presents, lawfully, peaceably and quietly have, hold, use,
occupy, possess and enjoy the said swamp,” etc.

Magnetic iron, being anciently found in Magnesia , —
hence magnes, or magnet, — employed by Pliny and
others. Chinese appear to have discovered the magnet
very early, a. d. 121 and before (?);used by them to
1 [Excursions, p. 240; Riv. 294.]

1851] MYTHOLOGY AND GEOLOGY 169

steer ships in 419; mentioned by an Icelander, 1068 r*
in a French poem, 1181; in Torfaeus’ History of Nor¬
way, 1266. Used by De Gama in 1427. Leading stone,
hence loadstone.

The peroxide of hydrogen, or ozone, at first thought
to be a chemical curiosity merely, is found to be very
generally diffused through nature.

The following bears on the floating ice which has
risen from the bottom of the meadows. Robert Hunt
says: “Water conducts heat downward but very slowly;
a mass of ice will remain undissolved but a few inches
under water on the surface of which ether or any other
inflammable body is burning. If ice swam beneath the
surface, the summer sun would scarcely have power to
thaw it; and thus our lakes and seas would be gradually
converted into solid masses.”

The figures of serpents, of griffins, flying dragons,
and other embellishments of heraldry, the eastern idea
of the world on an elephant, that on a tortoise, and that
on a serpent again, etc., usually regarded as mytho¬
logical in the common sense of that word, are thought
by some to “indicate a faint and shadowy knowledge
of a previous state of organic existence,” such as
geology partly reveals.

The fossil tortoise has been found in Asia large
enough to support an elephant.

Ammonites, snake-stones, or petrified snakes have
been found from of old, often decapitated.

In the northern part of Great Britain the fossil re¬
mains of encrinites are called “St. Cuthbert’s beads.”
“ Fiction dependent on truth.”

170

JOURNAL

[1851

Westward is heaven, or rather heavenward is the
west. The way to heaven is from east to west round
the earth. The sun leads and shows it. The stars,
too, light it.

Nature and man; some prefer the one, others the
other; but that is all de gustibus. It makes no odds at
what well you drink, provided it be a well-head.

Walking in the woods, it may be, some afternoon, the
shadow of the wings of a thought flits across the land¬
scape of my mind, and I am reminded how little event¬
ful are our lives. What have been all these wars and
rumors of wars, and modern discoveries and improve¬
ments so-called ? A mere irritation in the skin. But this
shadow which is so soon past, and whose substance is not
detected, suggests that there are events of importance
whose interval is to us a true historic period.1

The lecturer is wont to describe the Nineteenth
Century, the American [of] the last generation, in an
off-hand and triumphant strain, wafting him to paradise,
spreading his fame by steam and telegraph, recount¬
ing the number of wooden stopples he has whittled.
But who does not perceive that this is not a sincere or
pertinent account of any man’s or nation’s life ? It is
the hip-hip-hurrah and mutual-admiration-society style.
Cars go by, and we know their substance as well as their
shadow. They stop and we get into them. But those
sublime thoughts passing on high do not stop, and we
never get into them. Their conductor is not like one
of us.

I feel that the man who, in his conversation with me
1 [Excursions, p. 244; Riv. 299.]

171

1851] LAW AND LAWLESSNESS

about the life of man in New England, lays much stress
on railroads, telegraphs, and such enterprises does not
go below the surface of things. He treats the shallow
and transitory as if it were profound and enduring. In
one of the mind’s avatars, in the interval between sleep¬
ing and waking, aye, even in one of the interstices of
a Hindoo dynasty, perchance, such things as the Nine¬
teenth Century, with all its improvements, may come
and go again. Nothing makes a deep and lasting im¬
pression but what is weighty.

Obey the law which reveals, and not the law re¬
vealed.

I wish my neighbors were wilder.

A wildness whose glance no civilization could endure.1

He who lives according to the highest law is in one
sense lawless. That is an unfortunate discovery, cer¬
tainly, that of a law which binds us where we did not
know that we were bound. Live free, child of the mist!
He for whom the law is made, who does not obey the
law but whom the law obeys, reclines on pillows of
down and is wafted at will whither he pleases, for man
is superior to all laws, both of heaven and earth, when
he takes his liberty.2

Wild as if we lived on the marrow of antelopes de¬
voured raw.3

There would seem to be men in whose lives there
have been no events of importance, more than in the
beetle’s which crawls in our path.

1 [Excursions, p. 225; Riv. 276.]

3 [Excursions, p. 240; Riv. 295.]

3 [Excursions, p. 225; Riv. 276.]

172

JOURNAL

[March 19

March 19. The ice in the pond is now soft and will
not bear a heavy stone thrown from the bank. It is
melted for a rod from the shore. The ground has been
bare of snow for some weeks, but yesterday we had a
violent northeast snow-storm, which has drifted worse
than any the past winter. The spring birds — ducks
and geese, etc. — had come, but now the spring seems
far off.

No good ever came of obeying a law which you had
discovered.

March 23. For a week past the elm buds have been
swollen. The willow catkins have put out. The ice still
remains in Walden, though it will not bear. Mather
Howard saw a large meadow near his house which had
risen up but was prevented from floating away by the
bushes.

March 21. Walden is two-thirds broken up. It will
probably be quite open by to-morrow night.

March 30. Spring is already upon us. I see the
tortoises, or rather I hear them drop from the bank into
the brooks at my approach. The catkins of the alders
have blossomed. The pads are springing at the bottom
of the water. The pewee is heard, and the lark.

“It is only the squalid savages and degraded bosch-
men of creation that have their feeble teeth and tiny
stings steeped in venom, and so made formidable,” —
ants, centipedes, and mosquitoes, spiders, wasps, and
scorpions. — Hugh Miller.

173

1851] CARRYING OFF SIMS

To attain to a true relation to one human creature is
enough to make a year memorable.

The man for whom law exists — the man of forms,
the conservative — is a tame man.

CARRYING OFF SIMS

A recent English writer (De Quincey),1 endeavor¬
ing to account for the atrocities of Caligula and Nero,
their monstrous and anomalous cruelties, and the gen¬
eral servility and corruption which they imply, observes
that it is difficult to believe that “the descendants of
a people so severe in their habits” as the Romans
had been “could thus rapidly” have degenerated and
that, “in reality, the citizens of Rome were at this
time a new race, brought together from every quarter
of the world, but especially from Asia.” A vast “ pro¬
portion of the ancient citizens had been cut off by the
sword,” and such multitudes of emancipated slaves from
Asia had been invested with the rights of citizens “ that,
in a single generation, Rome became almost trans¬
muted into a baser metal.” As Juvenal complained,
“ the Orontes . . . had mingled its impure waters with
those of the Tiber.” And “probably, in the time of
Nero, not one man in six was of pure Roman descent.”
Instead of such, says another, “ came Syrians, Cappa¬
docians, Phrygians, and other enfranchised slaves.”
“These in half a century had sunk so low, that Ti¬
berius pronounced her [Rome’s]2 very senators to be
homines ad servitutem natos, men born to be slaves.” 3

1 [In The Caesars .] 3 [Supplied by Thoreau.]

8 [Blackwell, Court of Augustus ; quoted by De Quincey in a note.]

174

JOURNAL

[April

So one would say, in the absence of particular genea¬
logical evidence, that the vast majority of the inhabit¬
ants of the city of Boston, even those of senatorial dig¬
nity, — the Curtises, Lunts, Woodburys, and others, —
were not descendants of the men of the Revolution, —
the Hancocks, Adamses, Otises, — but some “ Syrians,
Cappadocians, and Phrygians,” merely, homines ad
servitutem natos, men born to be slaves. But I would
have done with comparing ourselves with our ancestors,
for on the whole I believe that even they, if somewhat
braver and less corrupt than we, were not men of so
much principle and generosity as to go to war in behalf
of another race in their midst. I do not believe that the
North will soon come to blows with the South on this
question. It would be too bright a page to be written in
the history of the race at present.

There is such an officer, if not such a man, as the
Governor of Massachusetts. What has he been about
the last fortnight ? He has probably had as much as he
could do to keep on the fence during this moral earth¬
quake. It seems to me that no such keen satire, no such
cutting insult, could be offered to that man, as the ab¬
sence of all inquiry after him in this crisis. It appears
to [have] been forgotten that there was such a man or
such an office. Yet no doubt he has been filling the
gubernatorial chair all the while. One Mr. Boutwell,
— so named, perchance, because he goes about well to
suit the prevailing wind.1

In ’75 two or three hundred of the inhabitants of
1 [Cape Cod , and Miscellanies , p. 890; Misc., Riv. 174.]

175

1851] CONCORD AND SLAVERY

Concord assembled at one of the bridges with arms in
their hands to assert the right of three millions to tax
themselves, to have a voice in governing themselves.
About a week ago the authorities of Boston, having the
sympathy of many of the inhabitants of Concord, assem¬
bled in the gray of the dawn, assisted by a still larger
armed force, to send back a perfectly innocent man, and
one whom they knew to be innocent, into a slavery as
complete as the world ever knew. Of course it makes
not the least difference — I wish you to consider this —
who the man was, — whether he was Jesus Christ or
another, — for inasmuch as ye did it unto the least of
these his brethren ye did it unto him. Do you think
he would have stayed here in liberty and let the black
man go into slavery in his stead ? They sent him back,
I say, to live in slavery with other three millions —
mark that — whom the same slave power, or slavish
power. North and South, holds in that condition, —
three millions who do not, like the first mentioned,
assert the right to govern themselves but simply to run
away and stay away from their prison.

Just a week afterward, those inhabitants of this town
who especially sympathize with the authorities of Bos¬
ton in this their deed caused the bells to be rung and
the cannon to be fired to celebrate the courage and
the love of liberty of those men who assembled at the
bridge. As if those three millions had fought for the
right to be free themselves, but to hold in slavery three
million others. Why, gentlemen, even consistency,
though it is much abused, is sometimes a virtue. Every
humane and intelligent inhabitant of Concord, when he

176

JOURNAL

[April

or she heard those bells and those cannon, thought not
so much of the events of the 19th of April, 1775, as of
the event of the 12th of April, 1851.

I wish my townsmen to consider that, whatever the
human law may be, neither an individual nor a nation
can ever deliberately commit the least act of injustice
without having to pay the penalty for it. A govern¬
ment which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists
in it! — it will become the laughing-stock of the
world.

Much as has been said about American slavery, I
think that commonly we do not yet realize what slavery
is. If I were seriously to propose to Congress to make
mankind into sausages, I have no doubt that most would
smile at my proposition and, if any believed me to be
in earnest, they would think that I proposed something
much worse than Congress had ever done. But, gentle¬
men, if any of you will tell me that to make a man into a
sausage would be much worse — would be any worse —
than to make him into a slave, — than it was then to
enact the fugitive slave law, — I shall here accuse him
of foolishness, of intellectual incapacity, of making a
distinction without a difference. The one is just as
sensible a proposition as the other.1

When I read the account of the carrying back of the
fugitive into slavery, which was read last Sunday even¬
ing, and read also what was not read here, that the man
who made the prayer on the wharf was Daniel Foster
of Concord , I could not help feeling a slight degree of
pride because, of all the towns in the Commonwealth,

1 [Cape Cod , and Miscellanies , pp. 392-394; Misc., Riv. 177-179.]

177

1851] THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW

Concord was the only one distinctly named as being
represented in that new tea-party, and, as she had a
place in the first, so would have a place in this, the last
and perhaps next most important chapter of the His¬
tory of Massachusetts. But my second feeling, when I
reflected how short a time that gentleman has resided
in this town, was one of doubt and shame, because the
men of Concord in recent times have done nothing to
entitle them to the honor of having their town named in
such a connection.

I hear a good deal said about trampling this law
under foot. Why, one need not go out of his way to do
that. This law lies not at the level of the head or the
reason. Its natural habitat is in the dirt. It was bred
and has its life only in the dust and mire, on a level with
the feet; and he who walks with freedom, unless, with
a sort of quibbling and Hindoo mercy, he avoids tread¬
ing on every venomous reptile, will inevitably tread on
it, and so trample it under foot.

It has come to this, that the friends of liberty, the
friends of the slave, have shuddered when they have
understood that his fate has been left to the legal tribu¬
nals, so-called, of the country to be decided. The peo¬
ple have no faith that justice will be awarded in such
a case. The judge may decide this way or that; it is a
kind of accident at best. It is evident that he is not
a competent authority in so important a case. I would
not trust the life of my friend to the judges of all the
Supreme Courts in the world put together, to be sacri¬
ficed or saved by precedent. I would much rather trust
to the sentiment of the people, which would itself be a

178

JOURNAL

[April

precedent to posterity. In their vote you would get
something worth having at any rate, but in the other
case only the trammelled judgment of an individual, of
no significance, be it which way it will.

I think that recent events will be valuable as a criti¬
cism on the administration of justice in our midst, or
rather as revealing what are the true sources of justice
in any community. It is to some extent fatal to the
courts when the people are compelled to go behind the
courts. They learn that the courts are made for fair
weather and for very civil cases.1

[Two pages missing.]

let us entertain opinions of our own; 2 let us be a town
and not a suburb, as far from Boston in this sense as
we were by the old road which led through Lexington;
a place where tyranny may ever be met with firmness
and driven back with defeat to its ships.

Concord has several more bridges left of the same
sort, which she is taxed to maintain. Can she not raise
men to defend them?

As for measures to be adopted, among others I would
advise abolitionists to make as earnest and vigorous
and persevering an assault on the press, as they have
already made, and with effect too, on the church. The
church has decidedly improved within a year or two,
aye, even within a fortnight; but the press is, almost
without exception, corrupt. I believe that in this coun¬
try the press exerts a greater and a more pernicious

1 [Cape Cod, and Miscellanies , pp. 894, 395; Misc., Riv. 179, 180.]

2 [Cape Cod , and Miscellanies, p. 397; Misc., Riv. 183.]

179

1851] SLAVERY AND THE PRESS

influence than the church. We are not a religious
people, but we are a nation of politicians. We do not
much care for, we do not read, the Bible, but we do care
for and we do read the newspaper. It is a bible which
we read every morning and every afternoon, standing
and sitting, riding and walking. It is a bible which
every man carries in his pocket, which lies on every
table and counter, which the mail and thousands of
missionaries are continually dispersing. It is the only
book which America has printed, and is capable of
exerting an almost inconceivable influence for good or
for bad. The editor is [a] preacher whom you volun¬
tarily support. Your tax is commonly one cent, and
it costs nothing for pew hire. But how many of these
preachers preach the truth? I repeat the testimony of
many an intelligent traveller, as well as my own con¬
victions, when I say that probably no country was ever
ruled by so mean a class of tyrants as are the editors
of the periodical press in this country. Almost without
exception the tone of the press is mercenary and servile.
The Commonwealth , and the Liberator , are the only
papers, as far as I know, which make themselves heard
in condemnation of the cowardice and meanness of the
authorities of Boston as lately exhibited. The other
journals, almost without exception, — as the Advertiser ,
the Transcript, the Journal, the Times, Bee, Herald,
etc., — by their manner of referring to and speaking of
the Fugitive Slave Law or the carrying back of the slave,
insult the common sense of the country. And they do
this for the most part, because they think so to secure
the approbation of their patrons, and also, one would

JOURNAL

180

[April

think, because they are not aware that a sounder senti¬
ment prevails to any extent.

But, thank fortune, this preacher can be more easily
reached by the weapons of the reformer than could the
recreant priest. The free men of New England have
only to refrain from purchasing and reading these
sheets, have only to withhold their cents, to kill a score
of them at once.1

Mahomet made his celestial journey in so short a time
that “ on his return he was able to prevent the complete
overturn of a vase of water, which the angel Gabriel
had struck with his wing on his departure.”

When he took refuge in a cave near Mecca, being
on his flight (Hegira) to Medina, “by the time that
the Koreishites [who were close behind] 2 reached the
mouth of the cavern, an acacia tree had sprung up
before it, in the spreading branches of which a pigeon
had made its nest, and laid its eggs, and over the whole
a spider had woven its web.”

He said of himself, “ I am no king, but the son of a
Koreishite woman, who ate flesh dried in the sun.”

He exacted “ a tithe of the productions of the earth,
where it was fertilized by brooks and rain; and a
twentieth part where its fertility was the result of irri¬
gation.”

April 22. Had mouse-ear in blossom for a week.
Observed the crowfoot on the Cliffs in abundance, and

1 [Cape Cody and MisceUanieSy pp. 897-899; Misc.t Riv. 183-185.]

* [The brackets are Thoreau’s.]

1851] THE SENTENCE OF THE JUDGE 181

the saxifrage. The wind last Wednesday, April 16th,
blew down a hundred pines on Fair Haven Hill.

Having treated my friend ill, I wished to apologize;
but, not meeting him, I made an apology to myself.

It is not the invitation which I hear, but which I
feel, that I obey.

April 26. The judge whose words seal the fate of a
man for the longest time and furthest into eternity is
not he who merely pronounces the verdict of the law,
but he, whoever he may be, who, from a love of truth
and unprejudiced by any custom or enactment of men,
utters a true opinion or sentence concerning him. He
it is that sentences him.1 More fatal, as affecting his
good or ill fame, is the utterance of the least inexpugn¬
able truth concerning him, by the humblest individual,
than the sentence of the supremest court in the land.

Gathered the mayflower and cowslips yesterday,
and saw the houstonia, violets, etc. Saw a dandelion in
blossom.

Are they Americans, are they New-Englanders, are
they inhabitants of Concord, — Buttricks and Davises
and Hosmers by name, — who read and support the
Boston Herald , Advertiser , Traveller , Journal , Tran -
script , etc., etc.. Times? Is that the Flag of our Union?

Could slavery suggest a more complete servility ? Is
there any dust which such conduct does not lick and
make fouler still with its slime? Has not the Boston
1 [Cape Cod , and Miscellanies , p. 396; Misc ., Riv. 181.]

182

JOURNAL

[April 26

Herald acted its part well, served its master faithfully ?
How could it have gone lower on its belly ? How can
a man stoop lower than he is low ? do more than put
his extremities in the place of that head he has ? than
make his head his lower extremity ? And when I say the
Boston Herald I mean the Boston press, with such few
and slight exceptions as need not be made. When I
have taken up this paper or the Boston Times , with my
cuffs turned up, I have heard the gurgling of the sewer
through every column; I have felt that I was handling
a paper picked out of the public sewers, a leaf from
the gospel of the gambling-house, the groggery, and the
brothel, harmonizing with the gospel of the Merchants’
Exchange.1

I do not know but there are some who, if they were
tied to the whipping-post and could but get one hand
free, would use it to ring the bells and fire the cannon to
celebrate their liberty. It reminded me of the Roman
Saturnalia, on which even the slaves were allowed to
take some liberty. So some of you took the liberty to
ring and fire. That was the extent of your freedom;
and when the sound of the bells died away, your liberty
died away also, and when the powder was all expended,
your liberty went off with the smoke. Nowadays men
wear a fool’s-cap and call it a liberty-cap. The joke
could be no broader if the inmates of the prisons were to
subscribe for all the powder to be used in such salutes,
and hire their jailors to do the firing and ringing for
them.2

1 [Cape Cod , and Miscellanies , pp. 399, 400; Misc., Riv. 185, 186.]

2 [Cape Cod, and Miscellanies , p. 393; Misc., Riv. 177, 178.]

1851] REAL COMMUNICATIONS 183

April 29. Every man, perhaps, is inclined to think
his own situation singular in relation to friendship. Our
thoughts would imply that other men have friends,
though we have not. But I do not know of two whom
I can speak of as standing in this relation to one another.
Each one makes a standing offer to mankind, “On
such and such terms I will give myself to you ; ” but it is
only by a miracle that his terms are ever accepted.

We have to defend ourselves even against those who
are nearest to friendship with us.

What a difference it is ! — to perform the pilgrimage
of life in the society of a mate, and not to have an
acquaintance among all the tribes of men !

What signifies the census — this periodical numbering
of men — to one who has no friend ?

I distinguish between my actual and my real com¬
munication with individuals. I really communicate with
my friends and congratulate myself and them on our
relation and rejoice in their presence and society
oftenest when they are personally absent. I remember
that not long ago, as I laid my head on my pillow for
the night, I was visited by an inexpressible joy that I
was permitted to know and be related to such mortals
as I was then actually related to; and yet no special
event that I could think of had occurred to remind me
of any with whom I was connected, and by the next
noon, perchance, those essences that had caused me
joy would have receded somewhat. I experienced a
remarkable gladness in the thought that they existed.
Their existence was then blessed to me. Yet such has
never been my actual waking relation to any.

184

JOURNAL

[April 29

Every one experiences that, while his relation to an¬
other actually may be one of distrust and disappoint¬
ment, he may still have relations to him ideally and so
really, in spite of both. He faintly conscious of a
confidence and satisfaction somewhere, and all further
intercourse is based on this experience of success.

The very dogs and cats incline to affection in their
relation to man. It often happens that a man is more
humanely related to a cat or dog than to any human
being. What bond is it relates us to any animal we keep
in the house but the bond of affection? In a degree
we grow to love one another.

April 30. What is a chamber to which the sun does
not rise in the morning ? What is a chamber to which
the sun does not set at evening? Such are often the
chambers of the mind, for the most part.

Even the cat which lies on a rug all day commences
to prowl about the fields at night, resumes her ancient
forest habits. The most tenderly bred grimalkin steals
forth at night, — watches some bird on its perch for an
hour in the furrow, like a gun at rest. She catches no
cold; it is her nature. Caressed by children and cher¬
ished with a saucer of milk. Even she can erect her
back and expand her tail and spit at her enemies like
the wild cat of the woods. Sweet Sylvia!

What is the singing of birds, or any natural sound,
compared with the voice of one we love?

To one we love we are related as to nature in the
spring. Our dreams are mutually intelligible. We take
the census, and find that there is one.

1851] LOVE AND MARRIAGE 185

Love is a mutual confidence whose foundations no
one knows. The one I love surpasses all the laws of
nature in sureness. Love is capable of any wisdom.

“He that hath love and judgment too
Sees more than any other doe.”

By our very mutual attraction, and our attraction to
all other spheres, kept properly asunder. Two planets
which are mutually attracted, being at the same time
attracted by the sun, preserve equipoise and harmony.

Does not the history of chivalry and knight-errantry
suggest or point to another relation to woman than
leads to marriage, yet an elevating and all-absorbing
one, perchance transcending marriage? As yet men
know not one another, nor does man know woman.

I am sure that the design of my maker when he has
brought me nearest to woman was not the propagation,
but rather the maturation, of the species. Man is capa¬
ble of a love of woman quite transcending marriage.

I observe that the New York Herald advertises situa¬
tions wanted by “respectable young women” by the
column, but never by respectable young men, rather
“intelligent” and “smart” ones; from which I infer
that the public opinion of New York does not require
young men to be respectable in the same sense in which
it requires young yvomen to be so.

May it consist with the health of some bodies to be
impure ?

IV

MAY, 1851
OET. 33)

May 1. Observed the Nuphar advena, yellow water-
lily, in blossom; also the Laurus Benzoin , or fever-bush,
spice-wood, near William Wheeler’s in Lincoln, resem¬
bling the witch-hazel. It is remarkable that this aro¬
matic shrub, though it grows by the roadside and does
not hide itself, may be, as it were, effectually concealed,
though it blossoms every spring. It may be observed
only once in many years.

The blossom-buds of the peach have expanded just
enough to give a slight peach tint to the orchards.

In regard to purity, I do not know whether I am
much worse or better than my acquaintances. If I con¬
fine my thought to myself, I appear, whether by con¬
stitution or by education, irrevocably impure, as if I
should be shunned by my fellow-men if they knew me
better, as if I were of two inconsistent natures; but
again, when I observe how the mass of men speak of
woman and of chastity, — with how little love and
reverence, — I feel that so far I am unaccountably bet¬
ter than they. I think that none of my acquaintances
has a greater love and admiration for chastity than I
have. Perhaps it is necessary that one should actually
stand low himself in order to reverence what is high
in others.

1851] AN OPTICAL ILLUSION 187

All distant landscapes seen from hilltops are veritable
pictures, which will be found to have no actual existence
to him who travels to them. “ ’T is distance lends en¬
chantment to the view.” It is the bare landscape with¬
out this depth of atmosphere to glass it. The distant
river-reach seen in the north from the Lincoln Hill, high
in the horizon, like the ocean stream flowing round
Homer’s shield, the rippling waves reflecting the light, is
unlike the same seen near at hand. Heaven intervenes
between me and the object. By what license do I call
it Concord River. It redeems the character of rivers to
see them thus. They were worthy then of a place on
Homer’s shield.

As I looked to-day from Mt. Tabor in Lincoln to
the Waltham hill, I saw the same deceptive slope, the
near hill melting into the further inseparably, indis-
tinguishably; it was one gradual slope from the base
of the near hill to the summit of the further one, a
succession of copse-woods, but I knew that there inter¬
vened a valley two or three miles wide, studded with
houses and orchards and drained by a considerable
stream. When the shadow of a cloud passed over the
nearer hill, I could distinguish its shaded summit
against the side of the other.

I had in my mind’s eye a silent gray tarn which I
had seen the summer before high up on the side of a
mountain, Bald Mountain, where the half-dead spruce
trees stood far in the water draped with wreathy mist
as with usnea moss, made of dews, where the mountain
spirit bathed; whose bottom was high above the sur-

188 JOURNAL [May 1

face of other lakes. Spruces whose dead limbs were
more in harmony with the mists which draped them.

The forenoon that I moved to my house, a poor old
lame fellow who had formerly frozen his feet hobbled
off the road, came and stood before my door with one
hand on each door-post, looking into the house, and
asked for a drink of water. I knew- that rum or some¬
thing like it was the only drink he loved, but I gave
him a dish of warm pond water, which was all I had,
nevertheless, which to my astonishment he drank, being
used to drinking.

Nations! What are nations? Tartars! and Huns!
and Chinamen! Like insects they swarm. The histo¬
rian strives in vain to make them memorable. It is for
want of a man that there are so many men. It is indi¬
viduals that populate the world.

THE SPIRIT OF LQDIN

“I look down from my height on nations.

And they become ashes before me;

Calm is my dwelling in the clouds;

Pleasant are the great fields of my rest.” 1

Man is as singular as God.

There is a certain class of unbelievers who some¬
times ask me such questions as, if I think that I can
live on vegetable food alone; and to strike at the root
of the matter at once, I am accustomed to answer such,
“Yes, I can live on board nails.” If they cannot un¬
derstand that, they cannot understand much that I
1 [Cape Cod , and Miscellanies, p. 473; Misc., Riv. 275, 276.]

THE CALIPH OMAR

189

1851]

have to say. That cuts the matter short with them.
For my own part, I am glad to hear of experiments
of this kind being tried; as that a young man tried for
a fortnight to see if he could live on hard, raw corn
on the ear, using his tooth for his only mortar. The
squirrel tribe tried the same and succeeded. The hu¬
man race is interested in these experiments, though a
few old women may be alarmed, who own their thirds
in mills.1

Khaled would have his weary soldiers vigilant still;
apprehending a midnight sally from the enemy, “Let
no man sleep,” said he. “We shall have rest enough
after death.” Would such an exhortation be under¬
stood by Yankee soldiers ?

Omar answered the dying Abu Beker: “ O successor
to the apostle of God! spare me from this burden. I
have no need of the Caliphat.” “ But the Caliphat has
need of you ! ” replied the dying Abu Beker.

“ Heraclius had heard of the mean attire of the Caliph
Omar, and asked why, having gained so much wealth
by his conquests, he did not go richly clad like other
princes ? They replied, that he cared not for this world,
but for the world to come, and sought favor in the eyes
of God alone. ‘ In what kind of a palace does he reside ? *
asked the emperor. ‘ In a house built of mud.’ ‘ Who
are his attendants?’ ‘Beggars and the poor.’ ‘What
tapestiy does he sit upon?’ ‘Justice and equity.’

1 [Walden, p. 72; Riv. 103.]

JOURNAL

190

[Mat 1

‘What is his throne?’ ‘Abstinence and true know¬
ledge.’ ‘What is his treasure?’ ‘Trust in God.’ ‘And
who are his guard ? ’ ‘ The bravest of the Unitarians.’ ”

It was the custom of Ziyad, once governor of Bassora,
“wherever he held sway, to order the inhabitants to
leave their doors open at night, with merely a hurdle at
the entrance to exclude cattle, engaging to replace any
thing that should be stolen: and so effective was his
police, that no robberies were committed.”

Abdallah was “ so fixed and immovable in prayer, that
a pigeon once perched upon his head mistaking him
for a statue.”

May 6. Monday. The Harivansa describes a “ sub¬
stance called Poroucha , a spiritual substance known
also under the name of Mahat, spirit united to the
five elements, soul of being, now enclosing itself in a
body like ours, now returning to the eternal body; it
is mysterious wisdom, the perpetual sacrifice made by
the virtue of the Yoga , the fire which animates animals,
shines in the sun, and is mingled with all bodies. Its
nature is to be born and to die, to pass from repose to
movement. The spirit led astray by the senses, in the
midst of the creation of Brahma, engages itself in works
and knows birth, as well as death. The organs of the
senses are its paths, and its work manifests itself in this
creation of Brahma. Thought tormented by desires,
is like the sea agitated by the wind. Brahma has said:
the heart filled with strange affections is to be here
below purified by wisdom. Here below even, clothed
already as it were in a luminous form, let the spirit.

THE HARIVANSA

191

1851]

though clogged by the bonds of the body, prepare for
itself an abode sure and permanent.

“ He who would obtain final emancipation must ab¬
stain from every exterior action. The operation which
conducts the pious and penitent Brahman to the know¬
ledge of the truth, is all interior, intellectual, mental.
They are not ordinary practices which can bring light
into the soul.

“ The Mouni who desires his final emancipation will
have care evening and morning to subdue his senses,
to fix his mind on the divine essence, and to transport
himself by the force of his soul to the eternal abode of
Vichnou. Although he may have engaged in works, he
does not wear the clog of them, because his soul is not
attached to them. A being returns to life in consequence
of the affection which he has borne for terrestrial things :
he finds himself emancipated, when he has felt only
indifference for them.

“ The Richis mingle with nature, which remains strange
to their senses. Luminous and brilliant they cover them¬
selves with a humid vapor, under which they seem no
more to exist, although existing always, like the thread
which is lost and confounded in the woof.

“ Free in this world, as the birds in the air, disengaged
from every kind of chain.

“Thus the Yogin, absorbed in contemplation, con¬
tributes for his part to creation: he breathes a divine
perfume, he hears wonderful things. Divine forms tra¬
verse him without tearing him, and united to the nature
which is proper to him, he goes, he acts, as animating
original matter.”

192

JOURNAL

[May 6

Like some other preachers, I have added my texts —
derived from the Chinese and Hindoo scriptures — long
after my discourse was written.

A commentary on the Sankhya Karika says, “By
external knowledge worldly distinction is acquired; by
internal knowledge, liberation.”

The Sankhya Karika says, “ By attainment of perfect
knowledge, virtue and the rest become causeless; yet
soul remains awhile invested with body, as the potter’s
wheel continues whirling from the effect of the impulse
previously given to it.”

I rejoice that horses and steers have to [be] broken
before they can be made the slaves of men, and that men
themselves have some wild oats still left to sow before
they become submissive members of society. Undoubt¬
edly all men are not equally fit subjects for civilization,
and because the majority, like dogs and sheep, are tame
by inherited disposition, is no reason why the others
should have their natures broken, that they may be
reduced to the same level. Men are in the main alike,
but they were made several in order that [they] might be
various. If a low use is to be served, one man will do
nearly or quite as well as another; if a high one, indi¬
vidual excellence is to be regarded. Any man can stop
a hole to keep the wind away, but no other man can serve
that use which the author of this illustration did. Con¬
fucius says, “The skins of the tiger and the leopard
when they are tanned, are as the skins of the dog and the

193

1851] THE STUDY OF NATURE

sheep tanned.” But it is not the part of a true culture to
tame tigers, any more than it is to make sheep ferocious.
It is evident, then, that tanning their skins for shoes and
the like is not the best use to which they can be put.1

How important is a constant intercourse with nature
and the contemplation of natural phenomena to the
preservation of moral and intellectual health! The dis¬
cipline of the schools or of business can never impart
such serenity to the mind. The philosopher contem¬
plates human affairs as calmly and from as great a
remoteness as he does natural phenomena. The ethical
philosopher needs the discipline of the natural philo¬
sopher. He approaches the study of mankind with great
advantages who is accustomed to the study of nature.

The Brahman Sayadwata, says the Dharma Sacon-
tala, was at first confounded on entering the city, “ but
now,” says he, “I look on it as the freeman on the
captive, as a man just bathed in pure water on a man
smeared with oil and dust.”

May 10. Heard the snipe over the meadows this
evening.

May 12. Heard the golden robin and the bobolink.

But where she has her seat, — whether in Westford
or in Boxboro, — not even the assessors know. Inquire
perchance of that dusky family on the cross-road, which
is said to have Indian blood in their veins. Or perchance
where this old cellar-hole now grassed over is faintly
1 [Excursions, pp. 235, 236; Riv. 288, 289.]

194

JOURNAL

[Mat 12

visible. Nature once had her dwelling. Ask the crazy old
woman who brings huckleberries to the village, but who
lives nobody knows where.

If I have got false teeth, I trust that I have not got a
false conscience. It is safer to employ the dentist than
the priest to repair the deficiencies of nature.

By taking the ether the other day I was convinced how
far asunder a man could be separated from his senses.
You are told that it will make you unconscious, but no
one can imagine what it is to be unconscious — how far
removed from the state of consciousness and all that we
call “ this world ” — until he has experienced it. The
value of the experiment is that it does give you expe¬
rience of an interval as between one life and another, — a
greater space than you ever travelled. You are a sane
mind without organs, — groping for organs, — which
if it did not soon recover its old senses would get new
ones. You expand like a seed in the ground. You exist
in your roots, like a tree in the winter. If you have an
inclination to travel, take the ether; you go beyond the
furthest star.

It is not necessary for them to take ether, who in their
sane and waking hours are ever translated by a thought;
nor for them to see with their hindheads, who some¬
times see from their foreheads; nor listen to the spirit¬
ual knockings, who attend to the intimations of reason
and conscience.

May 16. Heard the whip-poor-will this evening. A
splendid full moon to-night. Walked from 6.30 to

MOONLIGHT

195

1851]

10 p. m. Lay on a rock near a meadow, which had
absorbed and retained much heat, so that I could warm
my back on it, it being a cold night. I found that the
side of the sand-hill was cold on the surface, but warm
two or three inches beneath.1

If there is a more splendid moonlight than usual, only
the belated traveller observes it. When I am outside,
on the outskirts of the town, enjoying the still majesty
of the moon, I am wont to think that all men are aware
of this miracle, that they too are silently worshipping
this manifestation of divinity elsewhere. But when I go
into the house I am undeceived; they are absorbed in
checkers or chess or novel, though they may have been
advertised of the brightness through the shutters.

In the moonlight night what intervals are created!
The rising moon is related to the near pine tree which
rises above the forest, and we get a juster notion of dis¬
tance. The moon is only somewhat further off and on
one side. There may be only three objects, — myself,
a pine tree, and the moon, nearly equidistant.

Talk of demonstrating the rotation of the earth on its
axis, — see the moon rise, or the sun !

The moonlight reveals the beauty of trees. By day
it is so light and in this climate so cold commonly, that
we do not perceive their shade. We do not know when
we are beneath them.

According to Michaux, the canoe birch (Betula
papyracea) ceases below the forty-third degree of lati¬
tude. Sections of the wood from just below the first
1 [Excursions, p. 328; Riv. 403.]

JOURNAL

196

[May 16

ramification are used to inlay mahogany, in these parts.
It is brought from Maine for fuel.

Common white birch (B. populifolia) not found south
of Virginia. Its epidermis incapable of being divided
like the canoe birch and the European white.

The common alder (Alnus serrulata) blooms in
January.

The locust (Robinia Pseudacacia ) was one of the
earliest trees introduced into Europe from America (by
one Robin, about 1601) ; now extensively propagated in
England, France, and Germany. Used for trunnels to
the exclusion of all others in the Middle and Southern
States. Instead of decaying, acquire hardness with time.

May 18. Sunday. Lady’s-slipper almost fully blos¬
somed. The log of a canoe birch on Fair Haven, cut
down the last winter, more than a foot in diameter at the
stump; one foot in diameter at ten feet from the ground.
I observed that all parts of the epidermis exposed to the
air and light were white, but the inner surfaces, freshly
exposed, were a buff or salmon-color. Sinclair says that
in winter it is white throughout. But this was cut before
the sap flowed ? ? ! Was there any sap in the log ? I counted
about fifty rings. The shrub oaks are now blossoming.
The scarlet tanagers are come. The oak leaves of all
colors are just expanding, and are more beautiful than
most flowers. The hickory buds are almost leaves. The
landscape has a new life and light infused into it. The
deciduous trees are springing, to countenance the pines,
which ate evergreen. It seems to take but one summer
day to fetch the summer in. The turning-point between

1851] NOTES FROM MICHAUX 197

winter and summer is reached. The birds are in full blast.
There is a peculiar freshness about the landscape; you
scent the fragrance of new leaves, of hickory and sassa¬
fras, etc. And to the eye the forest presents the tender-
est green. The blooming of the apple trees is becoming
general.

I think that I have made out two kinds of poplar, —
the Populus tremuloides, or American aspen, and the
P. grandidentata , or large American aspen, whose young
leaves are downy.

Michaux says that the locust begins to convert its sap
into perfect wood from the third year; which is not done
by the oak, the chestnut, the beech, and the elm till
after the tenth or the fifteenth year.

He quotes the saying, “ The foot of the owner is the
best manure for his land.” “He” is Augustus L.' Hill-
house, who writes the account of the olive at the request
of Michaux.

The elder Michaux found the balsam poplar (P. bal-
samifera) very abundant on Lake St. John and the
Saguenay River, where it is eighty feet high and three
feet in diameter. This, however, is distinct from the
P. candicans, heart-leaved balsam poplar, which M.
finds hereabouts, though never in the woods, and does
not know where it came from.

He praises the Lombardy poplar because, its limbs
being compressed about the trunk, it does not inter¬
fere with the walls of a house nor obstruct the win¬
dows.

No wood equal to our black ash for oars, so pliant and

198

JOURNAL

[Mat 18

elastic and strong, second only to hickory for hand¬
spikes; used also for chair-bottoms and riddles.

The French call the nettle-tree hois inconnu.

Our white elm ( Ulmus Americana) “ the most magni¬
ficent vegetable of the temperate zone.”

The Finns mitis, yellow pine, or spruce pine, or short¬
leaved pine. A two-leaved pine widely diffused, but not
found northward beyond certain districts of Connecticut
and Massachusetts. In New Jersey fifty or sixty feet
high and fifteen to eighteen inches in diameter. Some¬
times three leaves on fresh shoots; smallest of pine
cones; seeds cast first year. Very excellent wood for
houses, masts, decks, yards, beams, and cabins, next in
durability to the long-leaved pine. Called at Liverpool
New York pine. Its regular branches make it to be
called spruce pine sometimes.

Pinus australis , or long-leaved pine, an invaluable
tree, called yellow pine, pitch pine, and broom pine
where it grows; in the North, Southern pine and red
pine; in England, Georgia pitch pine. First appears
at Norfolk, Virginia; thence stretches six hundred miles
southwest. Sixty or seventy feet high, by fifteen to eigh¬
teen inches; leaves a foot long, three in a sheath;
negroes use them for brooms. Being stronger, more
compact and durable, because the resin is equally
distributed, and also fine-grained and susceptible of
a bright polish, it is preferred to every other pine. In
naval architecture, most esteemed of all pines, — keels,
beams, side-planks, trunnels, etc. For decks preferred
to yellow pine, — and flooring houses. Sold for more
at Liverpool than any other pine. Moreover it supplies

199

1851] NOTES FROM MICHAUX

nearly all the resinous matter used and exported. Others
which contain much pitch are more dispersed. At pre¬
sent (1819) this business is confined to North Carolina.

M. says the branches of resinous trees consist almost
wholly of woody of which the organization is even more
perfect than in the body of the tree. They use dead
wood for the tar, etc., in which it has accumulated.

Says the vicinity of Brunswick, Me., and Burlington,
Vt., are the most northerly limits of the pitch pine or
P. rigida. (I saw what I should have called a pitch
pine at Montmorency.)

White pine (P. Strobus) most abundant between
forty-third and forty-seventh degrees, one hundred and
eighty feet by seven and eight twelfths the largest.
“The loftiest and most valuable” of the productions
of the New Hampshire forest.

The black spruce is called epinette noire and epi-
nette a la biere in Canada. From its strength best sub¬
stitute for oak and larch. Used here for rafters and
preferred to hemlock; tougher than white pine, but
more liable to crack.

The white spruce {Abies alba) called epinette blanche
in Canada. Not so large as the last and wood inferior.

Hemlock spruce {Abies Canadensis) called perusse
in Canada. In Maine, Vermont, and upper New
Hampshire, three fourths of the evergreen woods, the
rest being black spruce. Belongs to cold regions; be¬
gins to appear about Hudson’s Bay. Its fibre makes
the circuit of stocks fifteen or twenty inches in diameter
in ascending five or six feet. Old trees have their
circles separated, and the boards are shaky. Decays

200

JOURNAL

[May 18

rapidly when exposed to the air. It is firmer, though
coarser, than the white pine; affords tighter hold to
nails. Used in Maine for threshing-floors, resisting
indentation. Most common use sheathing of houses, to
be covered with clapboards. Used for laths.

White cedar ( Cupressus thyoides). “The perfect
wood resists the succession of dryness and moisture
longer than that of any other species ; ” hence for shingles.

Larch {Larix Americana) ; in Canada epinette rouge;
tamarack by the Dutch. Male aments appear before
the leaves. Wood superior to any pine or spruce in
strength and durability. Used in Maine for knees.

Cedar of Lebanon {Larix cedrus) largest and most
majestic of resinous trees of the Old World and one
of the finest vegetable productions of the globe.

Cedar Island in Lake Champlain northern limit
of red cedar {Juniperus Virginiana). Eastward, not
beyond Wiscasset. Seeds mature at beginning of fall
and sown at once; shoot next spring. Gin made from
them.

Arbor-vitse {Thuya occidentalis)y the only species of
Thuya in the New World. Lake St. John in Canada
its northern limit; abounds between 48° 50' and 45°.
The posts last thirty-five or forty years, and the rails
sixty, or three or four times as long as those of any other
species. In northern New England States the best for
fences; last longer in clay than sand.

The superiority of mahogany in the fineness of its
grain and its hardness, which make it susceptible of a
brilliant polish. Native trees in Northern States used
m cabinet making are black, yellow, and canoe birches.

1851] VEGETATION AND HUMAN LIFE 201

red-flowering curled maple, bird’s-eye maple, wild
cherry, and sumach.

The circlefs] of peck and other measures made at
Hingham of black, red, or gray oak are “always of a
dull blue color, produced by the gallic acid of the wood
acting upon the iron vessel in which it is boiled.”

White ash used for sieve rims, rake heads and
handles, scythe handles, pulleys, etc. Rake teeth of
the mockernut hickory.

In New York and Philadelphia “the price [of wood
for fuel] 1 nearly equals and sometimes exceeds that of
the best wood in Paris, though this immense capital
annually requires more than 300,000 cords, and is sur¬
rounded to the distance of 300 miles by cultivated
plains.” Said in book of 1819.

May 19. Found the Arum triphyllum and the nodding
trillium, or wake-robin, in Conant’s Swamp. An ash
also in bloom there, and the sassafras quite striking.
Also the fringed polygala by Conantum wood.

Sinclair says the hornbeam is called “ swamp beech ’*
in Vermont.

May 20. Tuesday. There is, no doubt, a perfect
analogy between the life of the human being and that
of the vegetable, both of the body and the mind. The
botanist Gray says : —

“The organs of plants are of two sorts: — 1. Those
of Vegetation, which are concerned in growth, — by
1 [Supplied by Thoreau.]

202

JOURNAL

[Mat 20

which the plant takes in the aerial and earthy matters
on which it lives, and elaborates them into the ma¬
terials of its own organized substance; 2. Those of
Fructification or Reproduction, which are concerned with
the propagation of the species.”

So is it with the human being. I am concerned first
to come to my Growth, intellectually and morally (and
physically, of course, as a means to this, for the body
is the symbol of the soul), and then to bear my Fruit,
do my Work, propagate my kind, not only physically
but morally, not only in body but in mind.

“The oigans of vegetation are the Root, Stem, and
Leaves. The Stem is the axis and original basis of the
plant.”

“ The first point of the stem preexists in the embryo
(i. e. in the rudimentary plantlet contained within the
seed): it is here called the radicle.” Such is the rudi¬
ment of mind, already partially developed, more than a
bud, but pale, having never been exposed to the light,
and slumbering coiled up, packed away in the seed,
unfolded [sic].

Consider the still pale, rudimentary, infantine, radi¬
cle-like thoughts of some students, which who knows
what they might expand to, if they should ever come
to the light and air, if they do not become rancid and
perish in the seed. It is not every seed that will survive
a thousand years. Other thoughts further developed,
but yet pale and languid, like shoots grown in a cellar.

“The plant . . . develops from the first in two
opposite directions, viz. upwards [to expand in the
light and air] to produce and continue the stem (or

1851] DEVELOPMENT OF THE MIND 203

ascending axis), and downwards [avoiding the light] 1 to
form the root (or descending axis). The former is ordi¬
narily or in great part aerial, the latter subterranean.”

So the mind develops from the first in two opposite
directions: upwards to expand in the fight and air;
and downwards avoiding the fight to form the root.
One half is aerial, the other subterranean. The mind
is not well balanced and firmly planted, like the oak,
which has not as much root as branch, whose roots like
those of the white pine are slight and near the surface.
One half of the mind’s development must still be root,
— in the embryonic state, in the womb of nature, more
unborn than at first. For each successive new idea or
bud, a new rootlet in the earth. The growing man pene¬
trates yet deeper by his roots into the womb of things.
The infant is comparatively near the surface, just cov¬
ered from the fight; but the man sends down a tap-root
to the centre of things.

The mere logician, the mere reasoner, who weaves
his arguments as a tree its branches in the sky, — no¬
thing equally developed in the roots, — is overthrown
by the first wind.

As with the roots of the plant, so with the roots of
the mind, the branches and branchlets of the root “ are
mere repetitions for the purpose of multiplying the ab¬
sorbing points, which are chiefly the growing or newly
formed extremities, sometimes termed spongelets . It
bears no other organs.”

So this organ of the mind’s development, the Root ,
bears no organs but spongelets or absorbing points.

1 [The bracketed portions in both cases are Thoreau’s.]

204

JOURNAL

[May 2

Annuals, which perish root and all the first season,
especially have slender and thread-like fibrous roots.
But biennials are particularly characterized by dis¬
tended, fleshy roots containing starch, a stock for future
growth, to be consumed during their second or flower¬
ing season, — as carrots, radishes, turnips. Perennials
frequently have many thickened roots clustered to¬
gether, tuberous or palmate roots, fasciculated or
clustered as in the dahlia, paeony, etc.

Roots may spring from any part of the stem under
favorable circumstances; “that is to say in darkness
and moisture, as when covered by the soil or resting
on its surface.”

That is, the most clear and ethereal ideas (Antaeus-
like) readily ally themselves to the earth, to the primal
womb of things. They put forth roots as soon as
branches; they are eager to be soiled. No thought soars
so high that it sunders these apron-strings of its mother.
The thought that comes to light, that pierces the empy¬
rean on the other side, is wombed and rooted in dark¬
ness, a moist and fertile darkness, — its roots in Hades
like the tree of life. No idea is so soaring but it will
readily put forth roots. Wherever there is an air-and-
light-seeking bud about to expand, it may become in
the earth a darkness-seeking root. Even swallows and
birds-of-paradise can walk on the ground. To quote the
sentence from Gray entire: “ Roots not only spring from
the root-end of the primary stem in germination, but also
from any subsequent part of the stem under favorable
circumstances, that is to say, in darkness and moisture,
as when covered by the soil or resting on its surface.”

1851] THE MIND AND ITS ROOTS 205

No thought but is connected as strictly as a flower,
with the earth. The mind flashes not so far on one side
but its rootlets, its spongelets, find their way instantly
on the other side into a moist darkness, uterine, — a low
bottom in the heavens, even miasma-exhaling to such
immigrants as are not acclimated. A cloud is uplifted
to sustain its roots. Imbosomed in clouds as in a chariot,
the mind drives through the boundless fields of space.
Even there is the dwelling of Indra.

I might here quote the following, with the last — of
roots: “They may even strike in the open air and
light, as is seen in the copious aerial rootlets by which
the Ivy, the Poison Ivy, and the Trumpet Creeper
climb and adhere to the trunks of trees or other bodies;
and also in Epiphytes or Air-plants, of most warm re¬
gions, which have no connection whatever with the soil,
but germinate and grow high in air on the trunks or
branches of trees, etc.; as well as in some terrestrial
plants, such as the Banian and Mangrove, that send
off aerial roots from their trunks or branches, which
finally reach the ground.”

So, if our light-and-air-seeking tendencies extend too
widely for our original root or stem, we must send down¬
ward new roots to ally us to the earth.

Also there are parasitic plants which have their roots
in the branches or roots of other trees, as the mistletoe,
the beech-drops, etc. There are minds which so have
their roots in other minds as in the womb of nature, —
if, indeed, most are not such ? !

May 21. Wednesday. Yesterday I made out the black

206

JOURNAL

[May 21

and the white ashes. A double male white ash in Miles’s
Swamp, and two black ashes with sessile leaflets. A
female white ash near railroad, in Stow’s land. The
white ashes by Mr. Pritchard’s have no blossoms, at
least as yet.

If I am right, the black ash is improperly so called,
from the color of its bark being lighter than the white.
Though it answers to the description in other respects,
even to the elder-like odor of the leaves, I should like
still to see a description of the yellow ash which grows
in made [sic\

The day before yesterday I found the male sassafras
in abundance but no female.

The leaves of my new pine on Merriam’s or Pine Hill
are of intermediate length between those of the yellow
pine and the Norway pine. I can find no cone to distin¬
guish the tree by; but, as the leaves are semicylindrical
and not hollowed I think it must be the red or Norway
Pine, though it does not look very red, and is spruce 1
answering perhaps to the description of the yellow pine,
which is sometimes called spruce pine.

To-day examined the flowers of the Nemopanthes
Canadensis, — a genus of a single species, says Emerson.
It bears the beautiful crimson velvety berry of the
swamps, and is what I have heard called the cornel.
Common name wild holly.

I have heard now within a few days that peculiar
dreaming sound of the frogs 1 which belongs to the
summer, — their midsummer night’s dream.

1 [Toads. See p. 250.]

1851] MAN OUR CONTEMPORARY 207

Only that thought and that expression are good which
are musical.

I think that we are not commonly aware that man is
our contemporary, — that in this strange, outlandish
world, so barren, so prosaic, fit not to live in but merely
to pass through, that even here so divine a creature as
man does actually live. Man, the crowning fact, the god
we know. While the earth supports so rare an inhabit¬
ant, there is somewhat to cheer us. Who shall say that
there is no God, if there is a just man. It is only within
a year that it has occurred to me that there is such a
being actually existing on the globe. Now that I per¬
ceive that it is so, many questions assume a new aspect.
We have not only the idea and vision of the divine our¬
selves, but we have brothers, it seems, who have this
idea also. Methinks my neighbor is better than I, and
his thought is better than mine. There is a represent¬
ative of the divinity on earth, of [whom] all things fair
and noble are to be expected. We have the material of
heaven here. I think that the standing miracle to man
is man. Behind the paling yonder, come rain or shine,
hope or doubt, there dwells a man, an actual being who
can sympathize with our sublimest thoughts.

The revelations of nature are infinitely glorious and
cheering, hinting to us of a remote future, of possibilities
untold; but startlingly near to us some day we find a
fellow-man.

The frog had eyed the heavens from his marsh, until
his mind was filled with visions, and he saw more than
belongs to this fenny earth. He mistrusted that he was
become a dreamer and visionary. Leaping across the

208

JOURNAL

[May 21

swamp to his fellow, what was his joy and consolation to
find that he too had seen the same sights in the heavens,
he too had dreamed the same dreams!

From nature we turn astonished to this near but super¬
natural fact.

I think that the existence of man in nature is the
divinest and most startling of all facts. It is a fact which
few have realized.

I can go to my neighbors and meet on ground as ele¬
vated as we could expect to meet upon if we were now
in heaven.

“And we live.

We of this mortal mixture, in the same law

As the pure colorless intelligence

Which dwells in Heaven, and the dead Hadean shades.”

I do not think that man can understand the importance
of man’s existence, its bearing on the other phenomena
of life, until it shall become a remembrance to him the
survivor that such a being or such a race once existed
on the earth. Imagine yourself alone in the world, a
musing, wondering, reflecting spirit, lost in thought, and
imagine thereafter the creation of man! — man made
in the image of God!

Looking into a book on dentistry the other day, I ob¬
served a list of authors who had written on this subject.
There were Ran and Tan and Yungerman, and I was
impressed by the fact that there was nothing in a name.
It was as if they had been named by the child’s rigma¬
role of lery \wiery\ ichery van , tittle-tol-tan, etc. I saw
in my mind a herd of wild creatures swarming over the
earth, and to each one its own herdsman had affixed

NAMES

209

1851]

some barbarous name, or sound, or syllables, in his own
dialect, — so in a thousand languages. Their names
were seen to be as meaningless exactly as Bose or Tray,
the names of dogs.1 Men get named no better.

We seem to be distinct ourselves, never repeated,
and yet we bear no names which express a proportion¬
ate distinctness; they are quite accidental. Take away
their names, and you leave men a wild herd, distinguished
only by their individual qualities. It is as if you were
to give names in the Caffre dialect to the individuals in
a herd of spring-boks or gnus.

We have but few patronymics, but few Christian
names, in proportion to the number of us. Is it that
men ceased to be original when genuine and original
names ceased to be given. Have we not enough charac¬
ter to establish a new patronymic.

Methinks it would be some advantage to philosophy
if men were named merely in the gross, as they are
known. It would only be necessary to know the genus
and, perchance, the species and variety, to know the
individual.

I will not allow mere names to make distinctions for
me, but still see men in herds for all them. A familiar
name cannot make a man less strange to me. It may
be given to a savage who retains in secret his own wild
title earned in the woods. I see that the neighbor who
wears the familiar epithet of William or Edwin takes
it off with his jacket. It does not adhere to him when
asleep or when in anger, or aroused by any passion or
inspiration. I seem to hear pronounced by some of his
1 [Excursions, p. 236; Riv. 289.]

210

JOURNAL

[May 21

kin at such a time his original wild name in some
jaw-breaking or else melodious tongue. As the names
of the Poles and Russians are to us, so are ours to
them.

Our names are as cheap as the names given to dogs.
We know what are dogs’ names; we know what are
men’s names. Sometimes it would be significant and
truer, it would lead to generalization, it would avoid
exaggeration, to say, “ There was a man who said or
did — instead of designating him by some familiar,
but perchance delusive, name. ,

We hardly believe that eveiy private soldier in a
Roman army had a name of his own.1

It is interesting to see how the names of famous men
are repeated, — even of great poets and philosophers.
The poet is not known to-day even by his neighbors to
be more than a common man. He is perchance the butt
of many. The proud farmer looks down [on] and boor¬
ishly ignores him, or regards him as a loafer who treads
down his grass, but perchance in course of time the
poet will have so succeeded that some of the farmer’s
posterity, though equally boorish with their ancestor,
will bear the poet’s name. The boor names his boy
Homer, and so succumbs unknowingly to the bard’s
victorious fame. Anything so fine as poetic genius he
cannot more directly recognize. The unpoetic farmer
names his child Homer.

You have a wild savage in you, and a savage name
is perchance somewhere recorded as yours.2

1 [Excursions, pp. 236, 237; Riv. 289-291.]

3 [Excursions, p. 237; Riv. 290.]

WILD APPLES

211

1851]

May 23. Friday. And wilder still there grows else¬
where, I hear, a native and aboriginal crab-apple. Ma¬
ins (as Michaux, or, as Emerson has it, Pyrus) coronaria
in Southern States, and also angustifolia in the Middle
States; whose young leaves “have a bitter and slightly
aromatic taste” (Michaux), whose beautiful flowers
perfume the air to a great distance. “ The apples . . . are
small, green, intensely acid, and very odoriferous. Some
farmers make cider of them, which is said to be excellent :
they make very fine sweet-meats also, by the addition
of a large quantity of sugar ” (Michaux). Celebrated for
“ the beauty of its flowers, and for the sweetness of its
perfume” (Michaux).1

Michaux says that the wild apple of Europe has
yielded to cultivation nearly three hundred species in
France alone. Emerson says, referring to Loudon,
“In 1836, the catalogue and the gardens of the Lon¬
don Horticultural Society contained upwards of 1400
distinct sorts, and new ones are every year added.”

But here are species which they have not in their
catalogue, not to mention the varieties which the crab
might yield to cultivation.2

This genus, so kind to the human race, the Malus
or Pyrus ; Rosacece the family, or others say Pomacece.
Its flowers are perhaps the most beautiful of any tree.
I am frequently compelled to turn and linger by some
more than usually beautiful two-thirds-expanded blos¬
soms.8 If such were not so common, its fame would be

1 [. Excursions , p. 301; Riv. 370.]

2 [Excursions, p. 316; Riv. 388.]

8 [Excursions, p. 294; Riv. 361.]

212 JOURNAL [May 23

loud as well as wide. Its most copious and delicious
blossoms.

But our wild apple is wild perchance like myself,
who belong not to the aboriginal race here, but have
strayed into the woods from the cultivated stock,1 —
where the birds, where winged thoughts or agents, have
planted or are planting me. Even these at length furnish
hardy stocks for the orchard.

You might call one Malus oculata ; another M.
Iridis ; M. cum parvuli dcemonis oculis , or Imp-eyed:
Blue- Jay Apple, or M. corvi cristati; Wood-Dell Ap¬
ple (M. silvestri-vallis ); Field-Dell Apple (M. cam-
pestri-vallis) ; Meadow Apple (M. pratensis ); Rock
Meadow Apple ( saxopratensis ); Partridge or Grouse
Apple or bud [sic\, Apple of the Hesperides ( Malus
Hesperidum); Woodside Apple; Wood Apple (M. sil-
vatica) ; the Truant’s Apple (M. cessatoris) ; Saunterer’s
Apple {M. erronis vel vagabundi); the Wayside Apple
(M. trivialis ); Beauty of the Air (decus aeris ); De¬
cember-eating; Frozen-thawed ( gelato-soluta or gelata
regelata ); the Concord Apple (M. Concordiensis); the
Brindled Apple; Wine of New England (M. vinosa);
the Chickaree Apple; the Green Apple (M. viridis );
the Dysentery or Cholera-morbus Apple.2

Distinctly related things are strangely near in fact,
brush one another with their jackets. Perchance this
window-seat in which we sit discoursing Transcendental¬
ism, with only Germany and Greece stretching behind
our minds, was made so deep because this was a few

1 [Excursions, p. SOI; Riv. 369.]

3 [Excursions, p. S16; Riv. 388, 389.]

213

1851] AN INSPIRING REGRET

years ago a garrison-house, with thick log walls, bullet¬
proof, behind which men sat to escape the wild red
man’s bullet and the arrow and the tomahawk, and
bullets fired by Indians are now buried in its walls.
Pythagoras seems near compared with them.

May 24. Saturday. Our most glorious experiences
are a kind of regret. Our regret is so sublime that we
may mistake it for triumph. It is the painful, plaintively
sad surprise of our Genius remembering our past lives
and contemplating what is possible. It is remarkable
that men commonly never refer to, never hint at, any
crowning experiences when the common laws of their
being were unsettled and the divine and eternal laws
prevailed in them. Their lives are not revolutionary;
they never recognize any other than the local and tem¬
poral authorities. It is a regret so divine and inspiring,
so genuine, based on so true and distinct a contrast,
that it surpasses our proudest boasts and the fairest
expectations.

My most sacred and memorable life is commonly on
awaking in the morning. I frequently awake with an
atmosphere about me as if my unremembered dreams
had been divine, as if my spirit had journeyed to its
native place, and, in the act of reentering its native
body, had diffused an elysian fragrance around.

The Genius says: “Ah! That is what you were!
That is what you may yet be ! ” It is glorious for us to
be able to regret even such an existence.

A sane and growing man revolutionizes every day.
What institutions of man can survive a morning experi-

214

JOURNAL

[May 24

ence ? A single night’s sleep, if we have indeed slum¬
bered and forgotten anything and grown in our sleep,
puts them behind us like the river Lethe. It is no
unusual thing for him to see the kingdoms of this world
pass away.1

It is an interesting inquiry to seek for the medicines
which will cure our ails in the plants which grow around
us. At first we are not disposed to believe that man and
plants are so intimately related. Very few plants have
been medically examined. And yet this is the extent
of most men’s botany; and it is more extensive than
would at first be supposed. The botanist is startled by
some countryman’s familiarity with an obscure plant to
him rare and strange. He, who has been an observer for
some years, knows not what it is, but the unobserving
countryman, who sees nothing but what is thrust upon
him, or the old woman who rarely goes out of the house,
shows an easy familiarity with it and can call it by
name.

I am struck by the fact that, though any important
individual experience is rare, though it is so rare that
the individual is conscious of a relation to his maker
transcending time and space and earth, though any
knowledge of, or communication from, “Providence”
is the rarest thing in the world, yet men very easily,
regarding themselves in the gross, speak of carrying
out the designs of Providence as nations. How often
the Saxon man talks of carrying out the designs of
Providence, as if he had some knowledge of Providence
1 Vide [p. 286].

1851] THE TRUE SITES FOR HOUSES 215

and His designs. Men allow themselves to associate
Providence and designs of Providence with their dull,
prosaic, every-day thoughts of things. That language
is usurped by the stalest and deadest prose, which can
only report the most choice poetic experience. This
“Providence” is the stalest jest in the universe. The
office-boy sweeps out his office “ by the leave of Provi¬
dence.”

May 25. A fine, freshening air, a little hazy, that
bathes and washes everything, saving the day from
extreme heat. Walked to the hills south of Wayland by
the road by Deacon Farrar’s. First vista just beyond
Merron’s ( ?), looking west down a valley, with a verdant-
columned elm at the extremity of the vale and the blue
hills and horizon beyond. These are the resting-places
in a walk. We love to see any part of the earth tinged
with blue, cerulean, the color of the sky, the celestial
color. I wonder that houses are not oftener located
mainly that they may command particular rare pros¬
pects, every convenience yielding to this. The farmer
would never suspect what it was you were buying, and
such sites would be the cheapest of any. A site where
you might avail yourself of the art of Nature for three
thousand years, which could never be materially changed
or taken from you, a noble inheritance for your children.
The true sites for human dwellings are unimproved. They
command no price in the market. Men will pay some¬
thing to look into a travelling showman’s box, but not
to look upon the fairest prospects on the earth. A vista
where you have the near green horizon contrasted with

216

JOURNAL

[May 25

the distant blue one, terrestrial with celestial earth.
The prospect of a vast horizon must be accessible in
our neighborhood. Where men of enlarged views may
be educated. An unchangeable kind of wealth, a real
estate.

There we found the celandine in blossom and the
Ranunculus bulbosus, which we afterwards saw double
in Wayland, having nine petals.

The Pyrus arbutifolia , variety melanocarpa . Gray
makes also the variety erythrocarpa. Is this the late red
choke-berry of the swamps ? and is the former the earlier
black one of the swamps ?

By Farrar’s the Nepeta Glechoma , a kind of mint.
Linnaeus calls it Glechoma hederacea. Looks somewhat
like catnep.

The marsh-marigold, Caltha palustris, improperly
called cowslip.

The white oak, Quercus alba. And the commonest
scrub oak, the bear or black oak, Q. ilicifolia.

The chinquapin, or dwarf chestnut, oak, the smallest
of our oaks, Q. prinoides.

The Crataegus coccinea ( ?), or scarlet-fruited thorn ( ?)

Another glorious vista with a wide horizon at the
yellow Dutch house, just over the Wayland line, by
the black spruce, heavy and dark as night, which we
could see two or three miles as a landmark. Now at
least, before the deciduous trees have fully expanded
their leaves, it is remarkably black. It is more stoutly
and irregularly branched than Holbrook’s spruces —
has a much darker foliage; but the cone scales of both
are slightly waved or notched. Are they, then, both

1851] VIEW FROM WAYLAND HILLS 217

black spruce? The cones are enough like, and the
thickness of the leaves; their color enough unlike. Here
is a view of the Jenkins house, the fish-pole house, and
Wachusett beyond.

Noticed what I think must be a young poison sumach 1
abundant by the roadside in woods, with last year’s ber¬
ries, with small greenish-yellow flowers, but leaves not
pinnatifid, three together; from one to two feet high.
What is it ?

Alnus serrulata, the common alder, with a grayish
stem, leaves smooth on both sides.

Alnus incana, the speckled alder, downy on under
side of leaves.

The hard-berried plant seems to be Andromeda
ligustrina (?) of Gray, A. paniculata of Bigelow,
Lyonia paniculata of Emerson.

Thyme-leaved veronica, little bluish-white, streak-
petalled flower by road sides. Silene Pennsylvania.

What is the orange-yellow aster-like flower of the
meadows now in blossom with a sweet-smelling stem
when bruised ? 2

What the delicate pinkish and yellowish flower with
hoary-green stem and leaves, of rocky hills.3

Saw Bunker Hill Monument and Charlestown from
the Wayland hills, and across the valleys to Milton Hill.4
Westward, or west by south, an island in a pond or in
the river (! which see!) A grand horizon. Probably saw
the elm between Wayland and Weston which is seen so

1 Ivy? 2 Golden senecio. 8 Corydalis.

4 [Doubtless Blue Hill is meant, not the lower eminence known as
Milton Hill.]

JOURNAL

218

[May 25

far in the horizon from the northwest part of Sudbury.
A good, a rare place this must be to view the Sudbury
or Wayland meadows a little earlier.

Came back across lots to the black spruce.

Now, at 8.30 o’clock p. m., I hear the dreaming of the
frogs.1 So it seems to me, and so significantly passes my
life away. It is like the dreaming of frogs in a summer
evening.

May 27. I saw an organ-grinder this morning before
a rich man’s house, thrilling the street with harmony,
loosening the very paving-stones and tearing the routine
of life to rags and tatters, when the lady of the house
shoved up a window and in a semiphilanthropic tone
inquired if he wanted anything to eat. But he, very
properly it seemed to me, kept on grinding and paid
no attention to her question, feeding her ears with
melody unasked for. So the world shoves up its window
and interrogates the poet, and sets him to gauging ale
casks in return. It seemed to me that the music suggested
that the recompense should be as fine as the gift. It
would be much nobler to enjoy the music, though you
paid no money for it, than to presume always a beggarly
relation. It is after all, perhaps, the best instrumental
music that we have.

May 28. The trees now begin to shade the streets.
When the sun gets high in the sky the trees give shade.
With oppressive heats come refreshing shadows.

The buttercups spot the churchyard.

1 [Toads. See p. 250.]

219

1851] THE MATERIA MEDICA

May 29. It is evident that the virtues of plants are
almost completely unknown to us, and we esteem the
few with which we are better acquainted unreasonably
above the many which are comparatively unknown to
us. Bigelow says: “It is a subject of some curiosity
to consider, if the knowledge of the present Materia
Medica were by any means to be lost, how many of the
same articles would again rise into notice and use.
Doubtless a variety of new substances would develop
unexpected powers, while perhaps the poppy would
be shunned as a deleterious plant, and the cinchona
might grow unmolested upon the mountains of Quito.”
Sawyer regards Nux vomica among the most valuable.
B. says (1817) : “ We have yet to discover our anodynes
and our emetics, although we abound in bitters, astrin¬
gents, aromatics, and demulcents. In the present state
of our knowledge we could not well dispense with opium
and ipecacuanha, yet a great number of foreign drugs,
such as gentian, columbo, chamomile, kino, catechu,
cascarilla, canella, etc., for which we pay a large an¬
nual tax to other countries, might in all probability
be superseded by the indigenous products of our own. It
is certainly better that our own country people should
have the benefit of collecting such articles, than that
we should pay for them to the Moors of Africa, or the
Indians of Brazil.”

The thorn-apple {Datura Stramonium) (apple of
Peru, devil’s-apple, Jamestown-weed) “emigrates with
great facility, and often springs up in the ballast of
ships, and in earth carried from one country to another.”
It secretes itself in the hold of vessels and migrates. It

220

JOURNAL

[May 29

is a sort of cosmopolitan weed, a roving weed. What
adventures! What historian knows when first it came
into a country! He quotes Beverly’s “History of Vir¬
ginia” as saying that some soldiers in the days of Ba¬
con’s rebellion, having eaten some of this plant, which
was boiled for salad by mistake, were made natural fools
and buffoons by it for eleven days, without injury to their
bodies ( ? ?).

The root of a biennial or perennial will accumulate
the virtues of the plant more than any other part.

B. says that Pursh states that the sweet-scented
goldenrod ( Solidago odora) “has for some time [i. e.
before 1817] 1 been an article of exportation to China,
where it fetches a high price.” And yet it is known to
very few New-Englanders.

“No botanist,” says B., “ even if in danger of starving
in a wilderness, would indulge his hunger on a root or
fruit taken from an unknown plant of the natural order
huridae , of the Multisiliquce, or the umbelliferous aqua¬
tics. On the contrary he would not feel a moment’s
hesitation in regard to any of the Gramina , the fruit
of the Pomaceae, and several other natural families of
plants, which are known to be uniformly innocent in
their effects.”

The aromatic flavor of the checkerberry is also per¬
ceived in the Gaultheria hispidula , in Spiraea ulmaria
and the root of Spiraea lobata , and in the birches.

He says ginseng, spigelia, snake-root, etc., form
considerable articles of exportation.

The odor of skunk-cabbage is perceived in some
1 [Supplied by Thoreau.]

1851] TOBACCO 221

North American currants, as Ribes rigens of Michaux
on high mountains.

At one time the Indians about Quebec and Montreal
were so taken up with searching for ginseng that they
could not be hired for any other purpose. It is said that
both the Chinese and the Indians named this plant
from its resemblance to the figure of a man.1

The Indians use the bark of Dirca palustris , or
leather-wood, for their cordage. It was after the long-
continued search of many generations that these quali¬
ties were discovered.

Of tobacco (Nicotiana Tabacum) B. says, after
speaking of its poisonous qualities: “Yet the first
person who had courage and patience enough to perse¬
vere in its use, until habit had overcome his original
disgust, eventually found in it a pleasing sedative, a
soother of care, and a material addition to the pleasures
of fife. Its use, which originated among savages, has
spread into every civilized country; it has made its way
against the declamations of the learned, and the pro¬
hibitions of civil and religious authority, and it now gives
rise to an extensive branch of agriculture, or of com¬
merce, in every part of the globe.” Soon after its intro¬
duction into Europe, “the rich indulged in it as a
luxury of the highest kind; and the poor gave them¬
selves up to it, as a solace for the miseries of life.” Several
varieties are cultivated.

In return for many foreign weeds, we have sent abroad,
says B., “the Erigeron Canadensis and the prolific
families of Ambrosia and Amaranthus .”

1 Bigelow got this from Kalm. Vide extract from Kalm.

222

JOURNAL

[May 29

“The Indians were acquainted with the medicinal
properties of more than one species of Euphorbia.”

I noticed the button-bush. May 25th, around an
elevated pond or mud-hole, its leaves just beginning to
expand. This slight amount of green contrasted with
its dark, craggly [sic\ naked-looking stem and branches
— as if subsiding waters had left them bare — looked
Dantesque and infernal. It is not a handsome bush at
this season, it is so slow to put out its leaves and hide
its naked and unsightly stems.

The Andromeda ligustrina is late to leave out.

Mains excelsa; amara; florida; palustris ; gratis-
sima; ramosa; spinosa; ferruginea ; aromatica; aurea;
rubiginosa; odorata; tristis ; officinalis!! herbacea;
vulgaris; aestivalis; autumnalis; riparia; versicolor;
communis; farinosa; super septa pendens;1 Modus
sepium ; vinum N ovae-Angliae ; succosa; saepe for -
micis praeoccupata ; vermiculosa aut verminosa aut
a vermibus corrupta vel erosa ; Modus semper virens et
viridis ; cholera-morbifera or dysenterifera ; M. sylves-
tripaludosa , excelsa et ramosa superne, difficilis con-
scendere , ( fructus difficiUimus stringere, parvus et durus) ;
Cortex picis perforata or perterebata ; rupestris ; agrestis ;
arvensis ; Assabettia ; Railroad Apple; Musketaquid -
ensis ; Dew Apple ( rorifera ) ; the apple whose fruit we
tasted in our youth which grows passim et nusquam ,
(. Modus cujus fructum ineunte aetate gustavi quae passim
et nusquam viget ); our own particular apple; Modus
numquam legata vel striata ; cortice muscosd ; Modus
viae-ferrece ; sylvatica in sylvis densissimis.2

1 Parietes , sepes , sepimenta [alternatives for septa].

9 [. Excursions , p. S16; Riv. 388, 389.]

A GOOD NAME

223

1851]

May 30. Friday. There was a Concord man once
who had a foxhound named Burgoyne. He called him
Bu gine. A good name.1

May 31. Pedestrium solatium in apricis locis; nodosa .2

1 [ Walden , p. 308; Riv. 432.]

2 [Excursions, p. 316; Riv. 389.]

V

JUNE, 1851
(jET. 33)

June 3. Tuesday. Lectured in Worcester last
Saturday, and walked to As- or //asnebumskit Hill in
Paxton the next day. Said to be the highest land in
Worcester County except Wachusett.

Met Mr. Blake, Brown, Chamberlin, Hinsdale, Miss
Butman (?), Wyman, Conant.

Returned to Boston yesterday. Conversed with John
Downes, who is connected with the Coast Survey, is
printing tables for astronomical, geodesic, and other
uses. He tells me that he once saw the common sucker
in numbers piling up stones as big as his fist (like the
piles which I have seen), taking them up or moving
them with their mouths.

Dr. Harris suggests that the mountain cranberry which
I saw at Ktaadn was the V accinium Vitis-Idcea, cow¬
berry, because it was edible and not the Uva-Ursi , or
bear-berry, which we have in Concord.

Saw the Uvularia perfoliata, perfoliate bellwort, in
Worcester near the hill ; an abundance of mountain
laurel on the hills, now budded to blossom and the
fresh fighter growth contrasting with the dark green; an
abundance of very large checkerberries, or partridge-
berries, as Bigelow calls them, on Hasnebumskit.
Sugar maples about there. A very extensive view, but

A FALLEN OAK

225

1851]

the western view not so much wilder as I expected.
See Barre, about fifteen miles off, and Rutland, etc., etc.
Not so much forest as in our neighborhood; high,
swelling hills, but less shade for the walker. The hills
are green, the soil springier; and it is written that
water is more easily obtained on the hill than in the
valleys. Saw a Scotch fir, the pine so valued for tar and
naval uses in the north of Europe.

Mr. Chamberlin told me that there was no corpora¬
tion in Worcester except the banks (which I suspect
may not be literally true), and hence their freedom and
independence. I think it likely there is a gas company
to light the streets at least.

John Mactaggart finds the ice thickest not in the
largest lakes in Canada, nor in the smallest, where the
surrounding forests melt it. He says that the surveyor
of the boundary-line between England and United States
on the Columbia River saw pine trees which would
require sixteen feet in the blade to a cross-cut saw to
do anything with them.

I examined to-day a large swamp white oak in Hub¬
bard’s meadow, which was blown down by the same
storm which destroyed the lighthouse. At five feet from
the ground it was nine and three fourths feet in circum¬
ference ; the first branch at eleven and a half feet from
ground; and it held its size up to twenty-three feet from
the ground. Its whole height, measured on the ground,
was eighty feet, and its breadth about sixty-six feet. The
roots on one side were turned up with the soil on them,
making an object very conspicuous a great distance off,
the highest root being eighteen feet from the ground

JOURNAL

[June 3

and fourteen feet above centre of trunk. The roots,
which were small and thickly interlaced, were from
three to nine inches beneath the surface (in other trees
I saw them level with the surface) and thence extended
fifteen to eighteen inches in depth (i. e. to this depth
they occupied the ground). They were broken off at
about eleven feet from the centre of the trunk and were
there on an average one inch in diameter, the largest
being three inches in diameter. The longest root was
broken off at twenty feet from the centre, and was there
three quarters of an inch in diameter. The tree was rot¬
ten within. The lower side of the soil (what was origin¬
ally the lower), which clothed the roots for nine feet
from the centre of the tree, was white and clayey to
appearance, and a sparrow was sitting on three eggs
within the mass. Directly under where the massive
trunk had stood, and within a foot of the surface, you
could apparently strike in a spade and meet with no
obstruction to a free cultivation. There was no tap¬
root to be seen. The roots were encircled with dark,
nubby rings. The tree, which still had a portion of its
roots in the ground and held to them by a sliver on the
leeward side, was alive and had leaved
out, though on many branches the leaves
were shrivelled again. Quercus bicolor of
Bigelow, Q. Prirvus discolor Mx. f.

I observed the grass waving to-day for
the first time, — the swift Camilla on it. It
might have been noticed before. You might have seen
it now for a week past on grain-fields.

Clover has blossomed.

1851] ANGELICA AND HEMLOCK 227

I noticed the indigo-weed a week or two ago pushing
up like asparagus. Methinks it must be the small an-
dromeda ( ?), that dull red mass of leaves in the swamp,
mixed perchance with the rhodora, with its dry fruit¬
like appendages, as well as the Andromeda paniculata ,
else called ligustrina , and the clethra. It was the golden
senecio ( Senecio aureus) which I plucked a week ago
in a meadow in Wayland. The earliest, methinks, of
the aster and autumnal-looking yellow flowers. Its
bruised stems enchanted me with their indescribable
sweet odor, like I cannot think what.

The Phaseolus vulgaris includes several kinds of
bush beans, of which those I raised were one.

June 6. Friday. Gathered last night the strong,
rank, penetrating-scented angelica.

Under the head of the Cicuta maculata , or American
hemlock, — “ It is a rule sanctioned by the observa¬
tions of medical botanists, that umbelliferous plants,
which grow in or about the water, are of a poisonous
nature.” 1 He does not say that the angelica is poison¬
ous, but I suppose that it is. It has such a rank, offen¬
sive, and killing odor as makes me think of the ingre¬
dients of the witches’ cauldron. It did not leave my
hands, which had carried it, long after I had washed
them. A strong, penetrating, lasting, and sickening
odor.

Gathered to-night the Cicuta maculata , American
hemlock, the veins of the leaflets ending in the notches
and the root fasciculated.

1 [Bigelow, American Medical Botany , vol. i.]

JOURNAL

[June 6

Bigelow says, “ The leaves of the Solidago odora have
a delightfully fragrant odor, partaking of that of anise
and sassafras, but different from either.” 1

June 7. My practicalness is not to be trusted to the
last. To be sure, I go upon my legs for the most part,
but, being hard-pushed and dogged by a superficial
common sense which is bound to near objects by beaten
paths, I am off the handle, as the phrase is, — I begin
to be transcendental and show where my heart is. I
am like those guinea-fowl which Charles Darwin saw
at the Cape de Verd Islands. He says, “ They avoided
us like partridges on a rainy day in September, running
with their heads cocked up; and if pursued, they readily
took to the wing.” Keep your distance, do not infringe
on the interval between us, and I will pick up lime and
lay real terrestrial eggs for you, and let you know by
cackling when I have done it.

When I have been asked to speak at a temperance
meeting, my answer has been, “ I am too transcendental
to serve you in your way.” They would fain confine me
to the rum-sellers and rum-drinkers, of whom I am not
one, and whom I know little about.

It is a certain faeryland where we live. You may walk
out in any direction over the earth’s surface, lifting your
horizon, and everywhere your path, climbing the con¬
vexity of the globe, leads you between heaven and earth,
not away from the fight of the sun and stars and the
habitations of men. I wonder that I ever get five miles
on my way, the walk is so crowded with events and
1 [Bigelow, American Medical Botany , vol. i.]

1851] THE PAST AND THE FUTURE 229

phenomena. How many questions there are which I
have not put to the inhabitants!

But how far can you carry your practicalness ? How
far does your knowledge really extend ? When I have
read in deeds only a hundred years old the words “to
enjoy and possess, he and his assigns, forever ,” I have
seen how short-sighted is the sense which conducts from
day to day. When I read the epitaphs of those who
died a century ago, they seem deader even than they
expected. A day seems proportionally a long part of
your “forever and a day.”

There are few so temperate and chaste that they can
afford to remind us even at table that they have a palate
and a stomach.

We believe that the possibility of the future far ex¬
ceeds the accomplishment of the past. We review the
past with the common sense, but we anticipate the
future with transcendental senses. In our sanest mo¬
ments we find ourselves naturally expecting or pre¬
pared for far greater changes than any which we have
experienced within the period of distinct memory, only
to be paralleled by experiences which are forgotten.
Perchance there are revolutions which create an in¬
terval impassable to the memory.

With reference to the near past, we all occupy the re¬
gion of common sense, but in the prospect of the future
we are, by instinct, transcendentalists.

We affirm that all things are possible, but only these
things have been to our knowledge. I do not even infer
the future from what I know of the past . I am hardly
better acquainted with the past than with the future.

230

JOURNAL

[June 7

What is new to the individual may be familiar to the
experience of his race. It must be rare indeed that the
experience of the individual transcends that of his race.
It will be perceived that there are two kinds of change,
— that of the race, and that of the individual within
the limits of the former.

One of those gentle, straight-down rainy days, when
the rain begins by spotting the cultivated fields as if
shaken from a pepper-box; a fishing day, when I see
one neighbor after another, having donned his oil-cloth
suit, walking or riding past with a fish-pole, having
struck work, — a day and an employment to make
philosophers of them all.

When introduced to high life I cannot help perceiving
how it is as a thing jumped at, and I find that I do not
get on in my enjoyment of the fine arts which adorn it,
because my attention is wholly occupied with the jump,
remembering that the greatest genuine leap on record,
due to human muscles alone, is that of certain wander¬
ing Arabs who cleared twenty-five feet on level ground.
The first question which I am tempted to put to the
proprietor of such great impropriety is, “Who boosts
you ? ” Are you one of the ninety-nine who fail or the
hundredth, who succeeds ?

June 8. Sunday. In F. A. Michaux’s, i. e. the younger
Michaux’s, “Voyage a l’ouest des Monts Alleghanys,
1802,” printed at Paris, 1808: —

He says the common inquiry in the newly settled

1851] F. A. MICHAUX ON THE OHIO 231

West was, “‘From what part of the world have you
come?’ As if these vast and fertile regions would
naturally be the point of union {reunion, meeting)
and the common country of all the inhabitants of the
globe.”1

The current of the Ohio is so swift in the spring that
it is not necessary to row. Indeed rowing would do
more harm than good, since it would tend to turn the
ark out of the current on to some isle or sand-bar, where
it would be entangled amid floating trees. This has
determined the form of the bateaux, which are not the
best calculated for swiftness but to obey the current.
They are from fifteen to fifty feet long by ten to twelve
and fifteen, with square ends, and roof of boards like a
house at one end. The sides are about four and a half
feet above the water. “ I was alone on the shore of the
Monongahela, when I perceived, for the first time, in
the distance, five or six of these bateaux which were
descending this river. I could not conceive what those
great square boxes were, which, abandoned to the
current, presented alternately their ends, their sides,
and even (or also ( ?), et meme) their angles. As they
came nearer, I heard a confused noise but without
distinguishing anything, on account of the elevation
of the sides. It was only on ascending the bank of the
river that I perceived, in these bateaux, many fami¬
lies carrying with them their horses, cows, poultry,
dismounted carts (< charrettes ), plows, harnesses, beds,
agricultural implements, in short all that constitute the
movables of a household {menage) and the carrying
1 [Excursions, p. 221; Riv. 271.]

232

JOURNAL

[June 8

on (i exploitation ) of a farm.” But he was obliged to
paddle his log canoe “ sans cesse ” because of the slug¬
gishness of the current of the Ohio in April, 1802.

A Vermonter told him that the expense of clearing
land in his State was always defrayed by the potash
obtained from the ashes of the trees which were burnt,
and sometimes people took land to clear on condition
that they should have what potash they could make.

After travelling more than three thousand miles in
North America, he says that no part is to be compared
for the “ force vegetative des forets ” to the region of the
Ohio between Wheeling and Marietta. Thirty-six
miles above the last place he measured a plane tree on
the bank of the Ohio which, at four feet from the ground,
was forty-seven in circumference. It is true it was
“renfle d’une maniere prodigieuse .” Tulip and plane
trees, his father had said, attained the greatest diameter
of North American trees.

Ginseng was then the only “ territorial ” production of
Kentucky which would pay the expense of transporta¬
tion by land to Philadelphia. They collected it from
spring to the first frosts. Even hunters carried for this
purpose, beside their guns, a bag and a little “ pioche.”
From twenty-five to thirty “ milliers pesant ” were then
transported annually, and this commerce was on the
increase. Some transported it themselves from Ken¬
tucky to China, i. e. without selling it [to] the merchants
of the seaboard. Traders in Kentucky gave twenty to
twenty-four “ sous ” the pound for it.

They habituated their wild hogs to return to the
house from time to time by distributing com for them

VARIOUS TREES

233

1851]

once or twice a week. So I read that in Buenos Ayres
they collect the horses into the corral twice a week to
keep them tame in a degree.

Gathered the first strawberries to-day.

Observed on Fair Haven a tall pitch pine, such as
some call yellow pine, — very smooth, yellowish, and
destitute of branches to a great height. The outer and
darker-colored bark appeared to have scaled off, leav¬
ing a fresh and smooth surface. At the ground, all round
the tree, I saw what appeared to be the edges of the old
surface scales, extending to two inches more in thick¬
ness. The bark was divided into large, smooth plates,
one to two feet long and four to six inches wide.

I noticed that the cellular portion of the bark of the
canoe birch log from which I stripped the epidermis a
week or two ago was turned a complete brick-red color
very striking to behold and reminding me of the red
man and all strong, natural things, — the color of our
blood somewhat. Under the epidermis it was still a sort
of buff. The different colors of the various parts of this
bark, at various times, fresh or stale, are extremely
agreeable to my eye.

I found the white-pine-top full of staminate blossom-
buds not yet fully grown or expanded, with a rich red
tint like a tree full of fruit, but I could find no pistillate
blossom.

The fugacious-petalled cistus, and the pink, and the
lupines of various tints are seen together.

Our outside garments, which are often thin and
fanciful and merely for show, are our epidermis, hang-

234

JOURNAL

[June 8

ing loose and fantastic like that of the yellow birch,
which may be cast off without harm, stripped off here
and there without fatal injury; sometimes called cuticle
and false skin. The vital principle wholly wanting in it;
partakes not of the life of the plant. Our thicker and more
essential garments are our cellular integument. When
this is removed, the tree is said to be girdled and dies.
Our shirt is the cortex, liber, or true bark, beneath which
is found the alburnum or sap-wood, while the heart in
old stocks is commonly rotten or has disappeared. As
if we grew like trees, and were of the exogenous kind.

June 9. James Wood, Senior, told me to-day that
Asa ( ?) Melvin’s father told him that he had seen ale-
wives caught (many of them) in the meadow which we
were crossing, on the west of Bateman’s Pond, where
now there is no stream, and though it is wet you can
walk everywhere; also one shad. He thinks that a
great part of the meadow once belonged to the pond.

Gathered the Linneea borealis.

June 11. Wednesday. Last night a beautiful sum¬
mer night, not too warm, moon not quite full, after two
or three rainy days. Walked to Fair Haven by railroad,
returning by Potter’s pasture and Sudbuiy road. I
feared at first that there would be too much white light,
like the pale remains of daylight, and not a yellow,
gloomy, dreamier light; that it would be like a candle-
fight by day; but when I got away from the town and
deeper into the night, it was better. I hear whip-poor-
wills, and see a few fireflies in the meadow.

A MOONLIGHT WALK

235

1851]

I saw by the shadows cast by the inequalities of the
clayey sand-bank in the Deep Cut that it was necessary
to see objects by moonlight as well as sunlight, to get a
complete notion of them. This bank had looked much
more flat by day, when the light was stronger, but now
the heavy shadows revealed its prominences. The promi¬
nences are light, made more remarkable by the dark
shadows which they cast.

When I rose out of the Deep Cut into the old pigeon-
place field, I rose into a warmer stratum of air, it being
lighter. It told of the day, of sunny noontide hours, —
an air in which work had been done, which men had
breathed. It still remembered the sunny banks, — of
the laborer wiping his brow, of the bee humming amid
flowers, the hum of insects. Here is a puff of warmer
air which has taken its station on the hills; which has
come up from the sultry plains of noon.1

I hear the nighthawks uttering their squeaking notes
high in the air now at nine o’clock p. m., and occasionally
— what I do not remember to have heard so late —
their booming note. It sounds more as if under a cope
than by day. The sound is not so fugacious, going off
to be lost amid the spheres, but is echoed hollowly to
earth, making the low roof of heaven vibrate. Such a
sound is more confused and dissipated by day.

The whip-poor-will suggests how wide asunder [are]
the woods and the town. Its note is very rarely heard
by those who live on the street, and then it is thought
to be of ill omen. Only the dwellers on the outskirts of
the village hear it occasionally. It sometimes comes
1 [Excursions, p. 328 ; Riv. 403.]

236

JOURNAL

[June 11

into their yards. But go into the woods in a warm night
at this season, and it is the prevailing sound. I hear now
five or six at once. It is no more of ill omen therefore
here than the night and the moonlight are. It is a bird
not only of the woods, but of the night side of the
woods.

New beings have usurped the air we breathe, round¬
ing Nature, filling her crevices with sound. To sleep
where you may hear the whip-poor-will in your dreams !

I hear from this upland, from which I see Wachusett
by day, a wagon crossing one of the bridges. I have no
doubt that in some places to-night I should be sure
to hear every carriage which crossed a bridge over the
river within the limits of Concord, for in such an hour
and atmosphere the sense of hearing is wonderfully
assisted and asserts a new dignity, and [we] become the
Hearalls of the story. The late traveller cannot drive
his horse across the distant bridge, but this still and
resonant atmosphere tells the tale to my ear. Circum¬
stances are very favorable to the transmission of such a
sound. In the first place, planks so placed and struck
like a bell swung near the earth emit a very resonant
and penetrating sound; add that the bell is, in this
instance, hung over water, and that the night air, not
only on account of its stillness, but perhaps on account
of its density, is more favorable to the transmission of
sound. If the whole town were a raised planked floor,
what a din there would be!

I hear some whip-poor-wills on hills, others in thick
wooded vales, which ring hollow and cavernous, like an
apartment or cellar, with their note. As when I hear

237

1851] AIR-STRATA AT NIGHT

the working of some artisan from within an apart¬
ment.

I now descend round the comer of the grain-field,
through the pitch pine wood into a lower field, more
inclosed by woods, and find myself in a colder, damp
and misty atmosphere, with much dew on the grass.
I seem to be nearer to the origin of things. There is
something creative and primal in the cool mist. This
dewy mist does not fail to suggest music to me, unac¬
countably; fertility, the origin of things. An atmosphere
which has forgotten the sun, where the ancient prin¬
ciple of moisture prevails. It is laden with the con¬
densed fragrance of plants and, as it were, distilled in
dews.

The woodland paths are never seen to such advan¬
tage as in a moonlight night, so embowered, still opening
before you almost against expectation as you walk; you
are so completely in the woods, and yet your feet meet
no obstacles. It is as if it were not a path, but an open,
winding passage through the bushes, which your feet
find.

Now I go by the spring, and when I have risen to the
same level as before, find myself in the warm stratum
again.

The woods are about as destitute of inhabitants at
night as the streets. In both there will be some night-
walkers. There are but few wild creatures to seek their
prey. The greater part of its inhabitants have retired
to rest.

Ah, that life that I have known! How hard it is to
remember what is most memorable! We remember

238

JOURNAL

[June 11

how we itched, not how our hearts beat. ‘ I can some¬
times recall to mind the quality, the immortality, of my
youthful life, but in memory is the only relation to it.

The very cows have now left their pastures and are
driven home to their yards. I meet no creature in the
fields.

I hear the night-warbler 1 breaking out as in his
dreams, made so from the first for some mysterious
reason.

Our spiritual side takes a more distinct form, like our
shadow which we see accompanying us.

I do not know but I feel less vigor at night; my legs
will not carry me so far; as if the night were less favor¬
able to muscular exertion, — weakened us, somewhat
as darkness turns plants pale. But perhaps my experi¬
ence is to be referred to being already exhausted by the
day, and I have never tried the experiment fairly. Yet
sometimes after a hard day’s work I have found myself
unexpectedly vigorous. It was so hot summer before
last that the Irish laborers on the railroad worked by
night instead of day for a while, several of them hav¬
ing been killed by the heat and cold water. I do not
know but they did as much work as ever by day. Yet
methinks Nature would not smile on such labors.

Only the Hunter’s and Harvest moons are famous,
but I think that each full moon deserves to be and has
its own character well marked. One might be called
the Midsummer-Night Moon.

1 [The first mention in the Journal of a bird the identity of which
Thoreau seems never to have made out. See Journal > vol. i. Introduc¬
tion, p. xlvi.]

239

1851] A BOOK OF THE SEASONS

The wind and water are still awake. At night you
are sure to hear what wind there is stirring. The wind
blows, the river flows, without resting. There lies Fair
Haven Lake, undistinguishable from fallen sky. The
pines seem forever foreign, at least to the civilized man,
— not only their aspect but their scent, and their tur¬
pentine.

So still and moderate is the night! No scream is
heard, whether of fear or joy. No great comedy nor
tragedy is being enacted. The chirping of crickets is
the most universal, if not the loudest, sound. There
is no French Revolution in Nature, no excess. She is
warmer or colder by a degree or two.

By night no flowers, at least no variety of colors. The
pinks are no longer pink; they only shine faintly, re¬
flecting more light. Instead of flowers underfoot, stars
overhead.

My shadow has the distinctness of a second person,
a certain black companion bordering on the imp, and
I ask, “ Who is this ? ” which I see dodging behind me
as I am about to sit down on a rock.

No one, to my knowledge, has observed the minute
differences in the seasons. Hardly two nights are alike.
The rocks do not feel warm to-night, for the air is
warmest; nor does the sand particularly. A book of
the seasons, each page of which should be written in
its own season and out-of-doors, or in its own locality
wherever it may be.

When you get into the road, though far from the
town, and feel the sand under your feet, it is as if you
had reached your own gravel walk. You no longer

240

JOURNAL

[June 11

hear the whip-poor-will, nor regard your shadow, for
here you expect a fellow-traveller. You catch yourself
walking merely. The road leads your steps and thoughts
alike to the town. You see only the path, and your
thoughts wander from the objects which are presented
to your senses. You are no longer in place. It is like
conformity, — walking in the ways of men.

In Charles Darwin’s “Voyage of a Naturalist round
the World,” commenced in 1831 : —

He gave to Ehrenberg some of an impalpably fine
dust which filled the air at sea near the Cape de Verd
Islands, and he found it to consist in great part of
“infusoria with siliceous shields, and of the siliceous
tissue of plants;” found in this sixty-seven different
organic forms. The infusoria with two exceptions in¬
habitants of fresh water. Vessels have even run on
shore owing to the obscurity. Is seen a thousand miles
from Africa. Darwin found particles of stone above a
thousandth of an inch square.

Speaking of St. Paul’s Rocks, Lat. 58' N., Long. 29°
15' W., “Not a single plant, not even a lichen, grows
on this islet; yet it is inhabited by several insects and
spiders. The following list completes, I believe, the
terrestrial fauna: a fly (Olfersia) living on the booby,
and a tick which must have come here as a parasite on
the birds; a small brown moth, belonging to a genus
that feeds on feathers; a beetle (Quedius), and a wood¬
louse from beneath the dung; and lastly numerous
spiders, which I suppose prey on these small attendants
and scavengers of the waterfowl. The often-repeated
description of the stately palm and other noble tropical

DARWIN’S VOYAGE

241

1851]

plants, then birds, and lastly man, taking possession
of the coral islets as soon as formed, in the Pacific, is
probably not quite correct; I fear it destroys the poetry
of this story, that feather and dirt-feeding and para¬
sitic insects and spiders should be the first inhabitants
of newly-formed oceanic land.”

At Bahia or San Salvador, Brazil, took shelter under
a tree “so thick that it would never have been pene¬
trated by common English rain,” but not so there.

Of a partridge near the mouth of the Plata, “ A man
on horseback, by riding round and round in a circle,
or rather in a spire, so as to approach closer each time,
may knock on the head as many as he pleases.” Refers
to Hearne’s Journey, page 383, for “ In Arctic North
America the Indians catch the Varying Hare by walk¬
ing spirally round and round it, when on its form: the
middle of the day is reckoned the best time, when the
sun is high, and the shadow of the hunter not very long.”

In the same place, “General Rosas is also a perfect
horseman — an accomplishment of no small conse¬
quence in a country where an assembled army elected
its general by the following trial: A troop of unbroken
horses being driven into a corral, were let out through
a gateway, above which was a cross-bar: it was agreed
whoever should drop from the bar on one of these wild
animals, as it rushed out, and should be able, without
saddle or bridle, not only to ride it, but also to bring
it back to the door of the corral, should be their general.
The person who succeeded was accordingly elected, and
doubtless made a general fit for such an army. This
extraordinary feat has also been performed by Rosas.”

242 JOURNAL [June 11

Speaks of the Gaucho sharpening his knife on the
back of the armadillo before he kills him.

Alcide d’Orbigny, from 1825 to 1833 in South Amer¬
ica, now (1846) publishing the results on a scale which
places him second to Humboldt among South Ameri¬
can travellers.

Hail in Buenos Ayres as large as small apples; killed
thirteen deer, beside ostriches, which last also it blinded,
etc., etc. Dr. Malcomson told him of hail in India, in
1831, which “ much injured the cattle.” Stones flat, one
ten inches in circumference; passed through windows,
making round holes.

A difference in the country about Montevideo and
somewhere else attributed to the manuring and grazing
of the cattle. Refers to Atwater as saying that the same
thing is observed in the prairies of North America,
“where coarse grass, between five and six feet high,
when grazed by cattle, changes into common pasture
land.” (Vide Atwater’s words in Silliman’s North
American Journal , vol. i, p. 117.)

I would like to read Azara’s Voyage.

Speaks 1 of the fennel and the cardoon ( Cynara
cardunculus), introduced from Europe, now very com¬
mon in those parts of South America. The latter occurs
now on both sides the Cordilleras across the continent.
In Banda Oriental alone “ very many (probably several
hundred) square miles are covered by one mass of these
prickly plants, and are impenetrable by man or beast.
Over the undulating plains, where these great beds
occur, nothing else can now live. ... I doubt whether
1 [That is, Darwin.]

243

1851] SOUTH AMERICAN HORSES

any case is on record of an invasion on so grand a scale
of one plant over the aborigines.”

Horses first landed at the La Plata in 1535. Now
these, with cattle and sheep, have altered the whole
aspect of the country, — vegetation, etc. “ The wild pig
in some parts probably replaces the peccari; packs of
wild dogs may be heard howling on the wooded banks
of the less frequented streams; and the common cat,
altered into a large and fierce animal, inhabits rocky
hills.”

At sea, eye being six feet above level, horizon is
two and four fifths miles distant. “ In like manner, the
more level the plain, the more nearly does the hori¬
zon approach within these narrow limits; and this, in
my opinion, entirely destroys that grandeur which one
would have imagined that a vast level plain would have
possessed.”

Darwin found a tooth of a native horse contemporary
with the mastodon, on the Pampas of Buenos Ayres,
though he says there is good evidence against any horse
living in America at the time of Columbus. He speaks
of their remains being common in North America.
Owen has found Darwin’s tooth similar to one Lyell
brought from the United States, but unlike any other,
fossil or living, and named this American horse Equus
curvidens , from a slight but peculiar curvature in it.

The great table-land of southern Mexico makes the
division between North and South America with refer¬
ence to the migration of animals.

Quotes Captain Owen’s “ Surveying Voyage ” for say¬
ing that, at the town of Benguela on the west coast of

244

JOURNAL

[June 11

Africa in a time of great drought, a number of elephants
entered in a body to possess themselves of the wells.
After a desperate conflict and the loss of one man, the
inhabitants — three thousand — drove them off. Dur¬
ing a great drought in India, says Dr. Malcomson, “ a
hare drank out of a vessel held by the adjutant of the
regiment.”

The guanacos (wild llama) and other animals of
this genus have the habit of dropping their dung from
day to day in the same heap. The Peruvian Indians
use it for fuel, and are thus aided in collecting it.

Rowing up a stream which takes its rise in a moun¬
tain, you meet at last with pebbles which have been
washed down from it, when many miles distant. I love
to think of this kind of introduction to it.

The only quadruped native to the Falkland Islands
is a laige wolf-like fox. As far as he is aware, “ there is
no other instance in any part of the world of so small
a mass of broken land, distant from a continent, pos¬
sessing so large an aboriginal quadruped peculiar to
itself.”

In the Falkland Isles, where other fuel is scarce, they
frequently cook their beef with the bones from which
the meat has been scraped. Also they have “a green
little bush about the size of common heath, which has

Saw a cormorant play with its fishy prey as a cat
with a mouse, — eight times let it go and dive after it
again.

Seminal propagation produces a more original indi¬
vidual than that by buds, layers, and grafts.

THE FUEGIANS

245

1851]

Some inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego having got some
putrid whale’s blubber in time of famine, “ an old man
cut off thin slices and muttering over them, broiled them
for a minute, and distributed them to the famished
party, who during this time preserved a profound si¬
lence.” This was the only evidence of any religious
worship among them. It suggests that even the animals
may have something divine in them and akin to reve¬
lation, — some inspirations allying them to man as to
God.

“Nor is it easy to teach them our superiority except
by striking a fatal blow. Like wild beasts, they do not
appear to compare numbers; for each individual, if
attacked, instead of retiring, will endeavor to dash your
brains out with a stone, as certainly as a tiger under
similar circumstances would tear you.”

“We were well clothed, and though sitting close to
the fire, were far from too warm; yet these naked sav¬
ages, though further off, were observed, to our great
surprise, to be streaming with perspiration at under¬
going such a roasting.” 1

Ehrenberg examined some of the white paint with
which the Fuegians daub themselves, and found it to be
composed of infusoria, including fourteen polygastrica,
and four phytolitharia, inhabitants of fresh water, all
old and known forms! !

Again of the Fuegians : “ Simple circumstances —
such as the beauty of scarlet cloth or blue beads, the
absence of women, our care in washing ourselves —
excited their admiration far more than any grand or
1 [ Walden , p. 14; Riv. 22.]

246

JOURNAL

[June 11

complicated object, such as our ship. Bougainville
has well remarked concerning these people, that they
treat the ‘ chef-d’ceuvres de Pindustrie humaine,
comme ils traitent les loix de la nature es ses phe-
nomenes.’ ”

He was informed of a tribe of foot Indians now chan¬
ging into horse Indians apparently in Patagonia.

“With the exception of a few berries, chiefly of a
dwarf arbutus, the natives \i. e. of Tierra del Fuego] 1
eat no vegetable food besides this fungus” ( Cyttaria
Darwinii). The “only country . . . where a crypto-
gamic plant affords a staple article of food.”

No reptiles in Tierra del Fuego nor in Falkland
Islands.

Describes a species of kelp there, — Macrocystis
pyrifera. “ I know few things more surprising than to
see this plant growing and flourishing amidst those
great breakers of the Western Ocean, which no mass
of rock, let it be ever so hard, can long resist. ... A
few [stems]2 taken together are sufficiently strong to
support the weight of the large loose stones to which,
in the inland channels, they grow attached; and yet
some of these stones were so heavy that, when drawn
to the surface, they could scarcely be lifted into a boat
by one person.” Captain Cook thought that some of
it grew to the length of three hundred and sixty feet.
“The beds of this sea-weed, even when not of great
breadth,” says D., “make excellent natural floating
breakwaters. It is quite curious to see, in an exposed

1 [The brackets are Thoreau’s.]
a [The word is supplied by Thoreau.]

FORESTS OF KELP

247

1851]

harbor, how soon the waves from the open sea, as
they travel through the straggling stems, sink in height,
and pass into smooth water.”

Number of living creatures of all orders whose ex¬
istence seems to depend on the kelp; a volume might
be written on them. If a forest were destroyed any¬
where, so many species would not perish as if this weed
were, and with the fish would go many birds and larger
marine animals, and hence the Fuegian himself per¬
chance.

Tree ferns in Van Diemen’s Land (lat. 45°) six feet
in circumference.

Missionaries encountered icebergs in Patagonia in
latitude corresponding to the Lake of Geneva, in a sea¬
son corresponding to June in Europe. In Europe, the
most southern glacier which comes down to the sea is
on coast of Norway, latitude 67°, — 20°, or 1230 [geo¬
graphical miles] nearer the pole.

Erratic boulders not observed in the intertropical
parts of the world; due to icebergs or glaciers.

Under soil perpetually frozen in North America in
56° at three feet; in Siberia in 62° at twelve to fifteen
feet.

In an excursion from Valparaiso to the base of the
Andes: “We unsaddled our horses near the spring,
and prepared to pass the night. The evening was fine,
and the atmosphere so clear that the masts of the ves¬
sels at anchor in the bay of Valparaiso, although no
less than twenty-six geographical miles distant, could
be distinguished clearly as little black streaks.” Anson
had been surprised at the distance at which his vessels

248

JOURNAL

[June 11

were discovered from the coast without knowing the
reason, — the great height of the land and the trans¬
parency of the air.

Floating islands from four to six feet thick in Lake
Tagua-tagua in central Chile; blown about.

June 12. Listen to music religiously, as if it were the
last strain you might hear.1

There would be this advantage in travelling in your
own country, even in your own neighborhood, that you
would be so thoroughly prepared to understand what
you saw you would make fewer travellers’ mistakes.

Is not he hospitable who entertains thoughts ?

June 13. Walked to Walden last night (moon not
quite full) by railroad and upland wood-path, returning
by Wayland road. Last full moon the elms had not
leaved out, — cast no heavy shadows, — and their out¬
lines were less striking and rich in the streets at night.

I noticed night before night before last from Fair
Haven how valuable was some water by moonlight,
like the river and Fair Haven Pond, though far away,
reflecting the light with a faint glimmering sheen, as in
the spring of the year. The water shines with an inward
light like a heaven on earth. The silent depth and se¬
renity and majesty of water! Strange that men should
distinguish gold and diamonds, when these precious
elements are so common. I saw a distant river by
moonlight, making no noise, yet flowing, as by day,
still to the sea, like melted silver reflecting the moon-
1 [Channing, p. 78.]

MOONLIGHT

249

1851]

light. Far away it lay encircling the earth. How far away
it may look in the night, and even from a low hill how
miles away down in the valley! As far off as paradise
and the delectable country! There is a certain glory
attends on water by night. By it the heavens are related
to the earth, undistinguishable from a sky beneath
you. And I forgot to say that after I reached the road
by Potter’s bars, — or further, by Potter’s Brook, — I
saw the moon suddenly reflected full from a pool. A
puddle from which you may see the moon reflected,
and the earth dissolved under your feet. The magical
moon with attendant stars suddenly looking up with
mild lustre from a window in the dark earth.

I observed also the same night a halo about my
shadow in the moonlight, which I referred to the acci¬
dentally lighter color of the surrounding surface; I
transferred my shadow to the darkest patches of grass,
and saw the halo there equally. It serves to make the
outlines of the shadow more distinct.

But now for last night. A few fireflies in the meadow.
Do they shine, though invisibly, by day ? Is their candle
lighted by day? It is not nightfall till the whip-poor-
wills begin to sing.

As I entered the Deep Cut, I was affected by behold¬
ing the first faint reflection of genuine and unmixed
moonlight on the eastern sand-bank while the horizon,
yet red with day, was tingeing the western side. What
an interval between those two lights! The light of the
moon, — in what age of the world does that fall upon
the earth ? The moonlight was as the earliest and dewy
morning light, and the daylight tinge reminded me

250

JOURNAL

[June 13

much more of the night. There were the old and new
dynasties opposed, contrasted, and an interval between,
which time could not span. Then is night, when the day¬
light yields to the nightlight. It suggested an interval,
a distance not recognized in history. Nations have
flourished in that light.

When I had climbed the sand-bank on the left, I felt
the warmer current or stratum of air on my cheek,
like a blast from a furnace.

The white stems of the pines, which reflected the
weak light, standing thick and close together while their
lower branches were gone, reminded me that the pines
are only larger grasses which rise to a chaffy head, and
we the insects that crawl between them. They are
particularly grass-like.

How long do the gales retain the heat of the sun ? I
find them retreated high up the sides of hills, especially
on open fields or cleared places. Does, perchance, any
of this pregnant air survive the dews of night? Can
any of it be found remembering the sun of yesterday
even in the morning hours. Does, perchance, some puff,
some blast, survive the night on elevated clearings
surrounded by the forest ?

The bullfrog belongs to summer. The different
frogs mark the seasons pretty well, — the peeping hyla,
the dreaming frog,1 and the bullfrog. I believe that all
may be heard at last occasionally together.

I heard partridges drumming to-night as late as 9
o’clock. What singularly space penetrating and filling
sound ! Why am I never nearer to its source ?

Toad.

BREATHING

251

1851]

We do not commonly live our life out and full; we
do not fill all our pores with our blood; we do not
inspire and expire fully and entirely enough, so that
the wave, the comber, of each inspiration shall break
upon our extremest shores, rolling till it meets the sand
which bounds us, and the sound of the surf come back to
us. Might not a bellows assist us to breathe ? That our
breathing should create a wind in a calm day! We five
but a fraction of our fife. Why do we not let on the
flood, raise the gates, and set all our wheels in motion ?
He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. Employ your
senses.

The newspapers tell us of news not to be named
even with that in its own kind which an observing man
can pick up in a solitary walk, as if it gained some
importance and dignity by its publicness. Do we need
to be advertised each day that such is still the routine
of fife ? 1

The tree-toad’s, too, is a summer sound.

I hear, just as the night sets in, faint notes from
time to time from some sparrow ( ?) falling asleep, — a
vesper hymn, — and later, in the woods, the chuckling,
rattling sound of some unseen bird on the near trees.
The nighthawk booms wide awake.

By moonlight we see not distinctly even the surface of
the earth, but our daylight experience supplies us with
confidence.

As I approached the pond down Hubbard’s Path,
after coming out of the woods into a warmer air, I saw
the shimmering of the moon on its surface, and, in the

1 [See Cape Cod , and Miscellanies , pp. 471, 472 ; Misc Riv. 274.]

252

JOURNAL

[June 13

near, now flooded cove, the water-bugs, darting, cir¬
cling about, made streaks or curves of light. The moon’s
inverted pyramid of shimmering light commenced
about twenty rods off, like so much micaceous sancf But
I was startled to see midway in the dark water a bright
flamelike, more than phosphorescent light crowning
the crests of the wavelets, which at first I mistook for
fireflies, and thought even of cucullos.1 It had the
appearance of a pure, smokeless flame a half-dozen
inches long, issuing from the water and bending flicker-
ingly along its surface. I thought of St. Elmo’s lights
and the like. But, coming near to the shore of the pond
itself, these flames increased, and I saw that even this
was so many broken reflections of the moon’s disk,
though one would have said they were of an intenser
light than the moon herself; from contrast with the
surrounding water they were. Standing up close to the
shore and nearer the rippled surface, I saw the reflec¬
tions of the moon sliding down the watery concave like
so many lustrous burnished coins poured from a bag
with inexhaustible lavishness, and the lambent flames
on the surface were much multiplied, seeming to slide
along a few inches with each wave before they were
extinguished ; and I saw how farther and farther off they
gradually merged in the general sheen, which, in fact,
was made up of a myriad little mirrors reflecting the
disk of the moon with equal brightness to an eye rightly
placed. The pyramid or sheaf of light which we see
springing from near where we stand only, in fact, is the
outline of that portion of the shimmering surface which
1 [Otherwise spelled “cucuyo,” a West Indian firefly.]

1851] REFLECTIONS OF THE MOON 253

an eye takes in. To myriad eyes suitably placed, the
whole surface of the pond would be seen to shimmer,
or rather it would be seen, as the waves turned up their
mirrors, to be covered with those bright flame-like reflec¬
tions of the moon’s disk, like a myriad candles every¬
where issuing from the waves; i. e. if there were as many
eyes as angles presented by the waves, the whole surface
would appear as bright as the moon ; and these reflec¬
tions are dispersed in all directions into the atmosphere,
flooding it with light. No wonder that water reveals
itself so far by night; even further in many states of
the atmosphere than by day. I thought at first it [was]
some unusual phosphorescence. In some positions these
flames were star-like points, brighter than the brightest
stars. Suddenly a flame would show itself in a near and
dark space, precisely like some inflammable gas on the
surface, — as if an inflammable gas made its way up
from the bottom.

I heard my old musical, simple-noted owl. The sound
of the dreaming frogs 1 prevails over the others. Occa¬
sionally a bullfrog near me made an obscene noise, a
sound like an eructation, near me. I think they must be
imbodied eructations. They suggest flatulency.

The pond is higher than ever, so as to hinder fisher¬
men, and I could hardly get to the true shore here on
account of the bushes. I pushed out in a boat a little
and heard the chopping of the waves under its bow.
And on the bottom I saw the moving reflections of
the shining waves, faint streaks of light revealing the
shadows of the waves or the opaqueness of the water.

1 [Toads. See p. 250.]

254

JOURNAL

[June 13

As I climbed the hill again toward my old bean-field, I
listened to the ancient, familiar, immortal, dear cricket
sound under all others, hearing at first some distinct
chirps; but when these ceased I was aware of the gen¬
eral earth-song, which my hearing had not heard, amid
which these were only taller flowers in a bed, and I
wondered if behind or beneath this there was not some
other chant yet more universal. Why do we not hear
when this begins in the spring ? and when it ceases in the
fall ? Or is it too gradual ?

After I have got into the road I have no thought to
record all the way home, — the walk is comparatively
barren. The leafy elm sprays seem to droop more by
night (??).

June 14. Saturday. Full moon last night. Set out on
a walk to Conantum at 7 p. m. A serene evening, the
sun going down behind clouds, a few white or slightly
shaded piles of clouds floating in the eastern sky, but a
broad, clear, mellow cope left for the moon to rise into.
An evening for poets to describe. Met a man driving
home his cow from pasture and stopping to chat with
his neighbor; then a boy, who had set down his pail
in the road to stone a bird most perseveringly, whom I
heard afterward behind me telling his pail to be quiet
in a tone of assumed anger, because it squeaked under
his arm. As I proceed along the back road I hear the
lark still singing in the meadow, and the bobolink, and
the gold robin on the elms, and the swallows twittering
about the barns. A small bird chasing a crow high in
the air, who is going home at night. All nature is in an

255

1851] THE BITTERN’S PUMPING

expectant attitude. Before Goodwin’s house, at the
opening of the Sudbury road, the swallows are diving
at a tortoise-shell cat, who curvets and frisks rather
awkwardly, as if she did not know whether to be scared
or not. And now, having proceeded a little way down
this road, the sun having buried himself in the low cloud
in the west and hung out his crimson curtains,1 I hear,
while sitting by the wall, the sound of the stake-driver
at a distance, — like that made by a man pumping
in a neighboring farmyard, watering his cattle, or like
chopping wood before his door on a frosty morning,2
and I can imagine like driving a stake in a meadow.
The pumper. I immediately went in search of the bird,
but, after going a third of a mile, it did not sound much
nearer, and the two parts of the sound did not appear
to proceed from the same place. What is the peculiarity
of these sounds which penetrate so far on the keynote
of nature ? At last I got near to the brook in the meadow
behind Hubbard’s wood, but I could not tell if [it] were
further or nearer than that. When I got within half
a dozen rods of the brook, it ceased, and I heard it no
more. I suppose that I scared it. As before I was
further off than I thought, so now I was nearer than I
thought. It is not easy to understand how so small a
creature can make so loud a sound by merely sucking
in or throwing out water with pump-like lungs.3 As

1 How quietly we entertain the possibility of joy, of recreation, of
light into \sic\ our souls! We should be more excited at the pulling
of a tooth.

2 [. Excursions , p. Ill; Riv. 137.]

8 [No water is used in producing the sound. Thoreau had been mis¬
informed by one of his neighbors. See Excursions, p. Ill; Riv. 137.]

256 JOURNAL [June 14

yet no moon, but downy piles of cloud scattered here
and there in the expectant sky.

Saw a blue flag blossom in the meadow while waiting
for the stake-driver.

It was a sound as of gulping water.

Where my path crosses the brook in the meadow
there is a singularly sweet scent in the heavy air bathing
the brakes, where the brakes grow, — the fragrance of
the earth, as if the dew were a distillation of the fragrant
essences of nature. When I reach the road, the farmer
going home from town invites me to ride in his high-
set wagon, not thinking why I walk, nor can I shortly
explain. He remarks on the coolness of the weather.
The angelica is budded, a handsome luxuriant plant.
And now my senses are captivated again by a sweet
fragrance as I enter the embowered willow causeway,
and I know not if it be from a particular plant or all
together, — sweet-scented vernal grass or sweet-briar.
Now the sun is fairly gone, I hear the dreaming frog,1
and the whip-poor-will from some darker wood, — it
is not far from eight, — and the cuckoo. The song
sparrows sing quite briskly among the willows, as if it
were spring again, and the blackbird’s harsher note
resounds over the meadows, and the veery’s comes up
from the wood. Fishes are dimpling the surface of the
river, seizing the insects which alight. A solitary fisher¬
man in his boat inhabits the scene. As I rose the hill
beyond the bridge, I found myself in a cool, fragrant,
dewy, up-country, mountain morning air, a new region.
(When I had issued from the willows on to the bridge,
1 Toad?

TWILIGHT

257

1851]

it was like coming out of night into twilight, the river
reflected so much light.) The moon was now seen rising
over Fair Haven and at the same time reflected in the
river, pale and white like a silvery cloud, barred with
a cloud, not promising how it will shine anon. Now I
meet an acquaintance coming from a remote field in his
hay-rigging, with a jag of wood; who reins up to show
me how large a woodchuck he has killed, which he
found eating his clover. But now he must drive on, for
behind comes a boy taking up the whole road with a
huge roller drawn by a horse, which goes lumbering
and bouncing along, getting out of the way of night,
— while the sun has gone the other way, — and making
such a noise as if it had the contents of a tinker’s shop
in its bowels, and rolls the whole road smooth like a
newly sown grain-field.

In Conant’s orchard I hear the faint cricket-like song
of a sparrow saying its vespers, as if it were a link
between the cricket and the bird. The robin sings
now, though the moon shines silverly, and the veery
jingles its trill. I hear the fresh and refreshing sound
of falling water, as I have heard it in New Hamp¬
shire. It is a sound we do not commonly hear. I see
that the whiteweed is in blossom, which, as I had
not walked by day for some time, I had not seen
before.

How moderate, deliberate, is Nature! How gradually
the shades of night gather and deepen, giving man
ample leisure to bid farewell to-day, conclude his day’s
affairs, and prepare for slumber! The twilight seems
out of proportion to the length of the day. Perchance it

258 JOURNAL [June 14

saves our eyes. Now for some hours the farmers have
been getting home.

Since the alarm about mad dogs a couple of years
ago there are comparatively few left to bark at the
traveller and bay the moon. All nature is abandoned
to me.

You feel yourself — your body, your legs, — more at
night, for there is less beside to be distinctly known, and
hence perhaps you think yourself more tired than you
are. I see indistinctly oxen asleep in the fields, silent in
majestic slumber, like the sphinx, — statuesque, Egypt¬
ian, reclining. What solid rest! How their heads are
supported! A sparrow or a cricket makes more noise.
From Conant’s summit I hear as many as fifteen whip-
poor-wills — or whip-or-I-wills — at once, the succeed¬
ing cluck sounding strangely foreign, like a hewer at
work elsewhere.

The moon is accumulating yellow light and triumph¬
ing over the clouds, but still the west is suffused here
and there with a slight red tinge, marking the path of
the day. Though inexperienced ones might call it
night, it is not yet. Dark, heavy clouds lie along the
western horizon, exhibiting the forms of animals and
men, while the moon is behind a cloud. Why do we
detect these forms so readily ? — whales or giants re¬
clining, busts of heroes, Michael-Angelic. There is the
gallery of statuary, the picture gallery of man, — not a
board upon an Italian’s head, but these dark figures
along the horizon, — the board some Titan carries on
his head. What firm and heavy outlines for such soft
and light material!

MUSIC OUT-OF-DOORS

259

1851]

How sweet and encouraging it is to hear the sound of
some artificial music from the midst of woods or from
the top of a hill at night, borne on the breeze from some
distant farmhouse, — the human voice or a flute!
That is a civilization one can endure, worth having. I
could go about the world listening for the strains of
music. Men use this gift but sparingly, methinks.
What should we think of a bird which had the gift of
song but used it only once in a dozen years, like the
tree which blossoms only once in a century ?

Now the dorbug comes humming by, the first I have
heard this year. In three months it will be the Harvest
Moon. I cannot easily believe it. Why not call this the
Traveller’s Moon ? It would be as true to call the last
(the May) the Planter’s Moon as it is to call September’s
the Harvest Moon, for the farmers use one about as
little as the other. Perhaps this is the Whip-poor-will’s
Moon. The bullfrog now, which I have not heard
before, this evening. It is nearly nine. They are much
less common and their note more intermittent than that
of the dreamers. I scared up a bird on a low bush,
perchance on its nest. It is rare that you start them at
night from such places.

Peabody says that the nighthawk retires to rest about
the time the whip-poor-will begins its song. The whip-
poor-will begins now at 7.30. I hear the nighthawk
after 9 o’clock. He says it flies low in the evening, but
it also flies high, as it must needs do to make the
booming sound.

I hear the lowing of cows occasionally, and the bark¬
ing of dogs. The pond by moonlight, which may make

260

JOURNAL

[June 14

the object in a walk, suggests little to be said. Where
there was only one firefly in a dozen rods, I hastily
ran to one which had crawled up to the top of a grass-
head and exhibited its light, and instantly another
sailed in to it, showing its light also; but my presence
made them extinguish their lights. The latter retreated,
and the former crawled slowly down the stem. It
appeared to me that the first was a female who thus
revealed her place to the male, who was also making
known his neighborhood as he hovered about, both
showing their lights that they might come together. It
was like a mistress who had climbed to the turrets of
her castle and exhibited there a blazing taper for a sig¬
nal, while her lover had displayed his light on the plain.
If perchance she might have any lovers abroad.

Not much before 10 o’clock does the moonlight night
begin. When man is asleep and day fairly forgotten,
then is the beauty of moonlight seen over lonely pastures
where cattle are silently feeding.1 Then let me walk in
a diversified country, of hill and dale, with heavy woods
one side, and copses and scattered trees and bushes
enough to give me shadows. Returning, a mist is on
the river. The river is taken into the womb of Nature
again.

Now is the clover month, but haying is not yet begun.

Evening. — Went to Nawshawtuct by North Branch.

Overtaken by a slight shower. The same increased
fragrance from the ground — sweet-fern, etc. — as in the
night, and for the like reason probably. The houstonias
1 [Excursions, p. 326 ; Riv. 401.]

DARWIN AGAIN

261

1851]

still blossom freshly, as I believe they continue to do
all summer. The fever-root in blossom; pictured in
Bigelow’s “Medical Botany.” Triosteum perfoliatum ,
near the top of Hill, under the wall, looks somewhat
like a milkweed. The Viburnum dentatum , very regu¬
larly toothed, just ready to blossom; sometimes called
arrow-wood.

Nature seems not [to] have designed that man should
be much abroad by night, and in the moon proportioned
the light fitly. By the faintness and rareness of the light
compared with that of the sun, she expresses her inten¬
tion with regard to him.

June 15. Sunday. Darwin still: —

Finds runaway sailors on the Chonos Archipelago,
who he thought “had kept a very good reckoning of
time,” having lost only four days in fifteen months.

Near same place, on the islands of the archipelago,
he found wild potato, the tallest four feet high, tubers
generally small but one two inches in diameter; “re¬
sembled in every respect, and had the same smell as
English potatoes; but when boiled they shrunk much,
and were watery and insipid, without any bitter taste.”

Speaking of the surf on the coast of Chiloe, “ I was
assured that, after a heavy gale, the roar can be heard
at night even at Castro, a distance of no less than
twenty-one sea-miles, across a hilly and wooded coun¬
try.”

Subsidence and elevation of the west coast of South
America and of the Cordilleras. “Daily it is forced
home on the mind of the geologist, that nothing, not

JOURNAL

262

[June 15

even the wind that blows, is so unstable as the level of
the crust of this earth.”

Would like to see Sir Francis Head’s travels in South
America, — Pampas perhaps.1 Also Chambers’ “Sea
Levels.” Also travels of Spix and Von Martius.

It is said that hydrophobia was first known in South
America in 1803.

At the Galapagos, the tortoises going to any place
travel night and day and so get there sooner than would
be expected, — about eight miles in two or three days.
He rode on their backs.

The productions of the Galapagos Archipelago,
from five to six hundred miles from America, are still
of the American type. “It was most striking to be
surrounded by new birds, new reptiles, new shells, new
insects, new plants, and yet, by innumerable trifling de¬
tails of structure, and even by the tones of voice and
plumage of the birds, to have the temperate plains of
Patagonia, or the hot, dry deserts of Northern Chile,
vividly brought before my eyes.” What is most singular,
not only are the plants, etc., to a great extent peculiar
to these islands, but each for the most part has its own
kinds, though they are within sight of each other.

Birds so tame that they can be killed with a stick. I
would suggest that, from having dealt so long with the
inoffensive and slow-moulded tortoise, they have not
yet acquired an instinctive fear of man, who is a new¬
comer. Methinks tortoises, lizards, etc., for wild crea¬
tures are remarkable for the nearness to which man
approaches them and handles them, as logs, — cold-
1 [Rough Notes of Journeys in the Pampas and Andes.]

CORAL ISLANDS

263

1851]

blooded, lumpish forms of life, — only taking care not
to step into their mouths. An alligator has been known
to have come out of the mud like a mud volcano where
was now the floor of a native’s hut.

“The common dock is . . . widely disseminated,
[in New Zealand] 1 and will, I fear, forever remain a
proof of the rascality of an Englishman, who sold the
seeds for those of the tobacco plant.”

The New-Hollanders a little higher in the scale of
civilization than the Fuegians.

Puzzled by a “well rounded fragment of greenstone,
rather larger than a man’s head,” which a captain had
found on a small coral circle or atoll near Keeling
Island, “where every other particle of matter is calca¬
reous,” about six hundred miles from Sumatra. D.
agrees with Kotzebue (vide Kotzebue) who states that
(Darwin’s words) “the inhabitants of the Radack
Archipelago, a group of lagoon-islands in the midst of
the Pacific, obtained stones for sharpening their instru¬
ments by searching the roots of trees which are cast
upon the beach,” and “ laws have been established that
such stones belong to the chief, and a punishment is
inflicted on any one who attempts to steal them.” Let
geologists look out. “ Some natives carried by Kotzebue
to Kamtschatka collected stones to take back to their
country.”

Found no bottom at 7200 feet, and 2200 yards from
shore of Keeling Island, a coral isle.

His theory of the formation of coral isles by the sub¬
sidence of the land appears probable. He concludes
1 [Supplied by Thoreau.]

264

JOURNAL

[June 15

that “ the great continents are, for the most part, rising
areas; and . . . the central parts of the great oceans
are sinking areas.”

Not a private person on the island of Ascension;
the inhabitants are paid and victualled by the British
government. Springs, cisterns, etc., are managed by the
same. “ Indeed, the whole island may be compared to a
huge ship kept in first-rate order.”

Vide “ Circumnavigation of Globe up to Cook/’

Vide “ Voyages Round the World since Cook.”

The author of the article on Orchids in the Eclectic
says that “a single plant produced three different
flowers of genera previously supposed to be quite dis¬
tinct.”

Saw the first wild rose to-day on the west side of the
railroad causeway. The whiteweed has suddenly ap¬
peared, and the clover gives whole fields a rich and
florid appearance, — the rich red and the sweet-scented
white. The fields are blushing with the red species as
the western sky at evening. The blue-eyed grass, well
named, looks up to heaven. And the yarrow, with its
persistent dry stalks and heads, is now ready to blossom
again. The dry stems and heads of last year’s tansy
stand high above the new green leaves.

I sit in the shade of the pines to hear a wood thrush
at noon. The ground smells of dry leaves; the heat is
oppressive. The bird begins on a low strain, i. e. it
first delivers a strain on a lower key, then a moment
after another a little higher, then another still varied
from the others, — no two successive strains alike, but

1851] THE RAPID GROWTH OF GRASS 265

either ascending or descending. He confines himself
to his few notes, in which he is unrivalled, as if his
kind had learned this and no more anciently.

I perceive, as formerly, a white froth dripping from
the pitch pines, just at the base of the new shoots. It
has no taste. The pollywogs in the pond are now full¬
tailed. The hickory leaves are blackened by a recent
frost, which reminds me that this is near their northern
limit.

It is remarkable the rapidity with which the grass
grows. The 25th of May I walked to the hills in Way-
land, and when I returned across lots do not remember
that I had much occasion to think of the grass, or to
go round any fields to avoid treading on it; but just a
week afterward, at Worcester, it was high and waving
in the fields, and I was to some extent confined to the
road; and the same was the case here. Apparently in
one month you get from fields which you can cross
without hesitation, to haying time. It has grown you
hardly know when, be the weather what it may, sun¬
shine or storm. I start up a solitary woodcock in the
shade, in some copse; goes off with a startled, rattling,
hurried note.

After walking by night several times I now walk by
day, but I am not aware of any crowning advantage
in it. I see small objects better, but it does not enlighten
me any. The day is more trivial.

What a careful gardener Nature is ! She does not let
the sun come out suddenly with all his intensity after
rain and cloudy weather, but graduates the change to
suit the tenderness of plants.

266

JOURNAL

[June 15

I see the tall crowfoot now in the meadows {Ranun¬
culus aeris ), with a smooth stem. I do not notice the
bulbosus , which was so common a fortnight ago. The
rose-colored flowers of the Kalmia angustijolia , lamb-
kill, just opened and opening. The Convallaria bifolia
growing stale in the woods. The Hieracium venosum ,
veiny-leaved hawkweed, with its yellow blossoms in
the woodland path. The Hypoxis erecta , yellow Beth¬
lehem-star, where there is a thick, wiry grass in open
paths; should be called yellow-eyed grass, methinks.
The Pyrola asarifolia , with its pagoda-like stem of
flowers, i. e. broad-leaved wintergreen. The Trientalis
Americana , like last, in the woods, with its star-like
white flower and pointed whorled leaves. The prunella
too is in blossom, and the rather delicate Thesium
umbellatum , a white flower. The Solomon’s-seal, with
a greenish drooping raceme of flowers at the top, I do
not identify.

I notice to-day the same remarkable bushy growth
on the fir (in Wheildon’s garden) that I have noticed
on the pines and cedars. The leaves are not so thickly
set and are much stiffer.

I find that I postpone all actual intercourse with my
friends to a certain real intercourse which takes place
commonly when we are actually at a distance from one
another.

June 22. Sunday. Is the shrub with yellow
blossoms which I found last week near the Lincoln
road while surveying for E. Hosmer and thought to
be Xylosteum ciliatum, or fly honeysuckle, the same

CRITICISM

1851]

267

with the yellow diervilla which I find in Laurel Glen
to-day ?

The birch is the surveyor’s tree. It makes the best
stakes to look at through the sights of a compass, except
when there is snow on the ground. Their white bark
was not made in vain. In surveying wood-lots I have
frequent occasion to say this is what they were made
for.

I see that Dugan has trimmed off and peeled the limbs
of the willows on the Turnpike to sell at the Acton
powder-mill. I believe they get eight dollars a cord for
this wood.

I. Hapgood of Acton got me last Friday to compare
the level of his cellar-bottom with his garden, for, as
he says, when Robbins & Wetherbee keep the water of
Nashoba Brook back so as to flood his garden, it comes
into his cellar. I found that part of the garden five
inches lower than the cellar-bottom. Men are affected
in various ways by the actions of others. If a man far
away builds a dam, I have water in my cellar. He said
that the water was sometimes a foot deep in the garden.

We are enabled to criticise others only when we are
different from, and in a given particular superior to,
them ourselves. By our aloofness from men and their
affairs we are enabled to overlook and criticise them.
There are but few men who stand on the hills by the
roadside. I am sane only when I have risen above my
common sense, when I do not take the foolish view of
things which is commonly taken, when I do not live for
the low ends for which men commonly live. Wisdom
is not common. To what purpose have I senses, if I

268

JOURNAL

[June 22

am thus absorbed in affairs? My pulse must beat
with Nature. After a hard day’s work without a thought,
turning my very brain into a mere tool, only in the quiet
of evening do I so far recover my senses as to hear the
cricket, which in fact has been chirping all day. In my
better hours I am conscious of the influx of a serene
and unquestionable wisdom which partly unfits, and if
I yielded to it more rememberingly would wholly unfit
me, for what is called the active business of life, for
that furnishes nothing on which the eye of reason can
rest. What is that other kind of life to which I am thus
continually allured ? which alone I love ? Is it a life for
this world ? Can a man feed and clothe himself gloriously
who keeps only the truth steadily before him? who
calls in no evil to his aid ? Are there duties which neces¬
sarily interfere with the serene perception of truth?
Are our serene moments mere foretastes of heaven, —
joys gratuitously vouchsafed to us as a consolation,
— or simply a transient realization of what might be
the whole tenor of our lives ?

To be calm, to be serene ! There is the calmness of
the lake when there is not a breath of wind; there is
the calmness of a stagnant ditch. So is it with us.
Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as
we never were before in our lives, not by an opiate,
but by some unconscious obedience to the all-just
laws, so that we become like a still lake of purest crys¬
tal and without an effort our depths are revealed to our¬
selves. All the world goes by us and is reflected in our
deeps. Such clarity! obtained by such pure means!
by simple living, by honesty of purpose. We live and

1851] THE WOOD THRUSH’S SONG 269

rejoice. I awoke into a music which no one about me
heard. Whom shall I thank for it ? The luxury of wis¬
dom! the luxury of virtue! Are there any intemperate
in these things ? I feel my Maker blessing me. To the
sane man the world is a musical instrument. The very
touch affords an exquisite pleasure.

As I walk the railroad causeway, I notice that the
fields and meadows have acquired various tinges as the
season advances, the sun gradually using all his paints.
There is the rosaceous evening red tinge of red clover,
— like an evening sky gone down upon the grass, — the
whiteweed tinge, the white clover tinge, which reminds
me how sweet it smells. The tall buttercup stars the
meadow on another side, telling of the wealth of dairies.
The blue-eyed grass, so beautiful near at hand, imparts
a kind of slate or clay blue tinge to the meads.

It is hot noon. The white pines are covered with
froth at the base of the new shoots, as I noticed the
pitch pines were a week ago; as if they perspired. I am
threading an open pitch and white pine wood, easily
traversed, where the pine-needles redden all the ground,
which is as smooth as a carpet. Still the blackberries
love to creep over this floor, for it is not many years since
this was a blackberry-field. And I hear around me,
but never in sight, the many wood thrushes whetting
their steel-like notes. Such keen singers ! It takes a fieiy
heat, many dry pine leaves added to the furnace of the
sun, to temper their strains! Always they are either
rising or falling to a new strain. After what a moder¬
ate pause they deliver themselves again! saying ever a
new thing, avoiding repetition, methinks answering one

270 JOURNAL [June 22

another. While most other birds take their siesta, the
wood thrush discharges his song. It is delivered like
a bolas, or a piece of jingling steel.

The domestic ox has his horns tipped with brass.
This and his shoes are the badges of servitude which he
wears; as if he would soon get to jacket and trousers.
I am singularly affected when I look over a herd of re¬
clining oxen in their pasture, and find that every one
has these brazen balls on his horns. They are partly
humanized so. It is not pure brute; there is art added.
Where are these balls sold ? Who is their maker ? The
bull has a ring in his nose.

The Lysimachia quadrifolia exhibits its small yellow
blossoms now in the wood-path. Butter-and-eggs has
blossomed. The Uvularia vulgaris , or bladderwort, a
yellow pea-like flower, has blossomed in stagnant pools.

June 23. It is a pleasant sound to me, the squeak¬
ing and the booming of nighthawks flying over high
open fields in the woods. They fly like butterflies, not to
avoid birds of prey but, apparently, to secure their own
insect prey. There is a particular part of the railroad
just below the shanty where they may be heard and
seen in greatest numbers. But often you must look a
long while before you can detect the mote in the sky
from which the note proceeds.

The common cinquefoil ( Potentilla simplex) greets
me with its simple and unobtrusive yellow flower in the
grass. The P. argentea , hoary cinquefoil, also is now
in blossom. P. sarmentosa , running cinquefoil, we had
common enough in the spring.

A MENAGERIE

271

1851]

June 26. Thursday . The slight reddish-topped grass
(red-top?) now gives a reddish tinge to some fields,
like sorrel.

Visited a menagerie this afternoon. I am always sur¬
prised to see the same spots and stripes on wild beasts
from Africa and Asia and also from South America, —
on the Brazilian tiger and the African leopard, — and
their general similarity. All these wild animals — lions,
tigers, chetas, leopards, etc. — have one hue, — tawny
and commonly spotted or striped, — what you may call
pard-color, a color and marking which I had not as¬
sociated with America. These are wild beasts. What
constitutes the difference between a wild beast and a
tame one ? How much more human the one than the
other! Growling, scratching, roaring, with whatever
beauty and gracefulness, still untamable, this royal
Bengal tiger or this leopard. They have the character
and the importance of another order of men. The
majestic lion, the king of beasts, — he must retain his
title.

I was struck by the gem-like, changeable, greenish
reflections from the eyes of the grizzly bear, so glassy
that you never saw the surface of the eye. They [were]
quite demonic. Its claws, though extremely large and
long, look weak and made for digging or pawing the
earth and leaves. It is unavoidable, the idea of trans¬
migration; not merely a fancy of the poets, but an in¬
stinct of the race.

June 29. There is a great deal of white clover this
year. In many fields where there has been no clover seed

272

JOURNAL

[June 29

sown for many years at least, it is more abundant than
the red, and the heads are nearly as large. Also pas¬
tures which are close cropped, and where I think there
was little or no clover last year, are spotted white with
a humbler growth. And everywhere, by roadsides, gar¬
den borders, etc., even where the sward is trodden hard,
the small white heads on short stems are sprinkled
everywhere. As this is the season for the swarming of
bees, and this clover is very attractive to them, it is
probably the more difficult to secure them; at any rate
it is the more important to secure their services now
that they can make honey so fast. It is an interesting
inquiry why this year is so favorable to the growth of
clover!

I am interested to observe how old-country methods
of farming resources are introduced among us. The
Irish laborer, for instance, seeing that his employer is
contemplating some agricultural enterprise, as ditch¬
ing or fencing, suggests some old-country mode with
[which] he has been familiar from a boy, which is often
found to be cheaper as well as more ornamental than
the common; and Patrick is allowed to accomplish the
object his own way, and for once exhibits some skill
and has not to be shown, but, working with a will as
well as with pride, does better than ever in the old
country. Even the Irishman exhibits what might be mis¬
taken for a Yankee knack, exercising a merely inbred
skill derived from the long teachings and practice of
his ancestors.

I saw an Irishman building a bank of sod where his
employer had contemplated building a bank wall, pil-

273

1851] OLD-COUNTRY METHODS

in g up very neatly and solidly with his spade and a line
the sods taken from the rear, and coping the face at a
very small angle from the perpendicular, intermingling
the sods with bushes as they came to hand, which would
grow and strengthen the whole. It was much more
agreeable to the eye, as well as less expensive, than
stone would have been, and he thought that it would be
equally effective as a fence and no less durable. But
it is true only experience will show when the same prac¬
tice may be followed in this climate and in Ireland, —
whether our atmosphere is not too dry to admit of it.
At any rate it was wise in the farmer thus to avail him¬
self of any peculiar experience which his hired laborer
possessed. That was what he should buy.

Also I noticed the other day where one who raises
seeds, when his ropes and poles failed, had used ropes
twisted of straw to support his plants, — a resource
probably suggested and supplied by his foreign laborers.
It is only remarkable that so few improvements or re¬
sources are or are to be adopted from the Old World.

I look down on rays of prunella by the roadsides now.
The panicled or privet andromeda with its fruit-like
white flowers. Swamp-pink I see for the first time this
season.

The tree-primrose (scabish) 1 ( (Enother biennais) , a
rather coarse yellow flower with a long tubular calyx,

1 [Bigelow, in his Florida Bostoniensis, says of this plant, now
generally called the evening-primrose, “In the country it is vulgarly
known by the name of Scabish, a corruption probably of Scabious , from
which however it is a very different plant.” Josselyn gives a quaint
description of it under the name of Lysimachus or Loose-strife in his
Two Voyages , and says it “is taken by the English for Scabious.”]

274 JOURNAL [June 29

naturalized extensively in Europe. The clasping bell¬
flower ( Campanula perfoliata , from the heart-shaped
leaves clasping the stalk), an interesting flower.

The Convolvulus sepium , large bindweed, make a
fresh morning impression as of dews and purity. The
adder’s-tongue arethusa, a delicate pink flower.

How different is day from day! Yesterday the air
was filled with a thick fog-like haze, so that the sun did
not once shine with ardor, but everything was so tem¬
pered under this thin veil that it was a luxury merely
to be outdoors, — you were less out for it. The shad¬
ows of the apple trees even early in the afternoon were
remarkably distinct. The landscape wore a classical
smoothness. Every object was as in [a] picture with a
glass over it. I saw some hills on this side the river,
looking from Conantum, on which, the grass being of
a yellow tinge, though the sun did not shine out on
them, they had the appearance of being shone upon
peculiarly. It was merely an unusual yellow tint of the
grass. The mere surface of water was an object for
the eye to linger on.

The panicled cornel, a low shrub, in blossom by wall-
sides now.

I thought that one peculiarity of my “ Week ” was its
hypoethral character, to use an epithet applied to those
Egyptian temples which are open to the heavens above,
under the ether. I thought that it had little of the at¬
mosphere of the house about it, but might wholly have
been written, as in fact it was to a considerable extent,
out-of-doors. It was only at a late period in writing it,
as it happened, that I used any phrases implying that

275

1851] DOG AND WAGON

I lived in a house or led a domestic life. I trust it does
not smell [so much] of the study and library, even of
the poet’s attic, as of the fields and woods; that it is
a hypsethral or unroofed book, lying open under the
ether and permeated by it, open to all weathers, not
easy to be kept on a shelf.

The potatoes are beginning to blossom.

Riding to survey a wood-lot yesterday, I observed
that a dog accompanied the wagon. Having tied the
horse at the last house and entered the woods, I saw no
more of the dog while there; but when riding back to
the village, I saw the dog again running by the wagon,
and in answer to my inquiry was told that the horse and
wagon were hired and that the dog always accompa¬
nied the horse. I queried whether it might happen that
a dog would accompany the wagon if a strange horse
were put into it; whether he would ever attach himself
to an inanimate object. Methinks the driver, though
a stranger, as it were added intellect to the mere ani¬
mality of the horse, and the dog, not making very nice
distinctions, yielded respect to the horse and equipage
as if it were human. If the horse were to trot off
alone without a wagon or driver, I think it doubtful
if the dog would follow; if with the wagon, then the
chances of his following would be increased; but if
with a driver, though a stranger, I have found by ex¬
perience that he would follow.

At a distance in the meadow I hear still, at long in¬
tervals, the hurried commencement of the bobolink’s
strain, the bird just dashing into song, which is 'as
suddenly checked, as it were, by the warder of the

276

JOURNAL

[June 29

seasons, and the strain is left incomplete forever. Like
human beings they are inspired to sing only for a short
season.1

That little roadside pea-like-blossomed blue flower 2
is interesting to me. The mulleins are just blossoming.

The voice of the crickets, heard at noon from deep
in the grass, allies day to night. It is unaffected by
sun and moon. It is a midnight sound heard at noon,
a midday sound heard at midnight.

I observed some mulleins growing on the western
slope of the sandy railroad embankment, in as warm
a place as can easily be found, where the heat was re¬
flected from the sand oppressively at 3 o’clock p. m.
this hot day; yet the green and living leaves felt rather
cool than otherwise to the hand, but the dead ones at
the root were quite warm. The living plant thus pre¬
serves a cool temperature in the hottest exposure, as
if it kept a cellar below, from which cooling liquors
were drawn up.

Yarrow is now in full bloom, and elder, and a small
many-headed white daisy like a small whiteweed. The
epilobium, too, is out.

The night-warbler sings the same strain at noon.
The song sparrow still occasionally reminds me of
spring.

I observe that the high water in the ponds, which
have been rising for a year, has killed most of the pitch
pines and alders which it had planted and merely
watered at its edge during the years of dryness. But
now it comes to undo its own work.

1 I have since heard some complete strains.

2 Pale lobelia.

HAYING BEGUN

1851]

m

How awful is the least unquestionable meanness,
when we cannot deny that we have been guilty of it.
There seem to be no bounds to our unworthiness.

June 30. Haying has commenced. I see the farmers
in distant fields cocking their hay now at six o’clock.
The day has been so oppressively warm that some
workmen have lain by at noon, and the haymakers are
mowing now in the early twilight.

The blue flag (Iris versicolor) enlivens the meadow.
The lark sings at sundown off in the meadow. It is a
note which belongs to a New England summer evening.
Though so late, I hear the summer hum of a bee in
the grass, as I am on my way to the river behind Hub¬
bard’s to bathe. After hoeing in a dusty garden all
this warm afternoon, — so warm that the baker says
he never knew the like and expects to find his horses
dead in the stable when he gets home, — it is very
grateful to wend one’s way at evening to some pure
and cool stream and bathe therein.

The cranberry is now in blossom. Their fresh shoots
have run a foot or two over the surface.

I have noticed an abundance of poison sumach this
season. It is now in blossom. In some instances it has
the size and form of a healthy peach tree.

The cuckoo is faintly heard from a neighboring grove.
Now that it is beginning to be dark, as I am crossing a
pasture I hear a happy, cricket-like, shrill little lay from
a sparrow, either in the grass or else on that distant
tree, as if it were the vibrations of a watch-spring; its
vespers. The tree-primrose, which was so abundant

278

JOURNAL

[June 30

in one field last Saturday, is now all gone. The cattle
on Bear Garden Hill, seen through the twilight, look
monstrously large. I find abounding in the meadows the
adder’s-tongue arethusa and occasionally with it the
Cymbidium tuberosum of the same tint. The obtuse
galium is a delicate vine-like plant with a minute white
blossom in the same places. The St. John’s-wort has
blossomed. The (Enothera pumila , or dwarf tree-prim¬
rose, a neat yellow flower, abounds in the meadows;
which the careless would mistake at a distance for
buttercups. The white buds of the clethra (alder¬
leaved) rise above their recent shoots. The narrow¬
leaved cotton-grass spots the meadow with white,
seeming like loose down, its stems are so slight. The
carrot growing wild which I observed by the railroad
is now blossoming, with its dishing blossom. I found
by the railroad, a quarter of a mile from the road,
some common garden catch-fly, the pink flower, grow¬
ing wild. Angelica is now in blossom, with its large
umbels. Swamp rose, fugacious-petalled. The prinos,
or winterberry, budded, with white clustered beriy-like
flower-buds, is a pretty contrast to itself in the winter,
— wax-like. While bathing I plucked the common
floating plant like a small yellow lily, the yellow water
ranunculus (R. multifidus). What I suppose is the
Aster miser , small-flowered aster, like a small many¬
headed whiteweed, has now for a week been in bloom;
a humble weed, but one of the earliest of the asters.1
The umbelled thesium, a simple white flower, on the

1 [Evidently not Aster miser , or, as it is now called A. lateriflorus,
which flowers much later in the season.]

1851] THE FRAGRANCE OF THE FIR 279

edge of the woods. Erysimum officinale, hedge mustard,
with its yellow flowers.

I first observed about ten days ago that the fresh
shoots of the fir balsam (Abies balsamifera ), found under
the tree wilted, or plucked and kept in the pocket or in
the house a few days, emit the fragrance of strawberries,
only it is somewhat more aromatic and spicy. It was to
me a very remarkable fragrance to be emitted by a pine.
A very rich, delicious, aromatic, spicy fragrance, which
if the fresh and living shoots emitted, they would be still
more to be sought after.

Saw a brood of young partridges yesterday, a little
larger than robins.

VI

JULY, 1851
(MT. 33-34)

July 2. It is a fresh, cool summer morning. From
the road at N. Barrett’s, on my way to P. Blood’s at
8.30 a. m., the Great Meadows have a slight bluish
misty tinge in part; elsewhere a sort of hoary sheen
like a fine downiness, inconceivably fine and silvery
far away, — the light reflected from the grass blades,
a sea of grass hoary with light, the counterpart of the
frost in spring. As yet no mowet has profaned it;
scarcely a footstep since the waters left it. Miles of
waving grass adorning the surface of the earth.

Last night, a sultry night which compelled to leave
all windows open, I heard two travellers talking aloud,
was roused out of my sleep by their loud, day-like, and
somewhat unearthly discourse at perchance one o’clock.
From the country, whiling away the night with loud
discourse. I heard the words “ Theodore Parker ” and
“ Wendell Phillips ” loudly spoken, and so did half a
dozen of my neighbors, who also were awakened. Such
is fame. It affected [me] like Dante talking of the men
of this world in the infernal regions. If the travellers
had called my own name I should equally have thought
it an unearthly personage which it would take me some
hours into daylight to realize. O traveller, have n’t you
got any further than that ? My genius hinted before

A TRAVELLER

281

1851]

I fairly awoke, “Improve your time.” What is the
night that a traveller’s voice should sound so hollow
in it ? that a man speaking aloud in the night, speak¬
ing in regions under the earth, should utter the words
“ Theodore Parker ” ?

A traveller! I love his title. A traveller is to be re¬
verenced as such. His profession is the best symbol of

our life. Going from - toward - ; it is the history

of every one of us. I am interested in those that travel
in the night.

It takes but little distance to make the hills and even
the meadows look blue to-day. That principle which
gives the air an azure color is more abundant.

To-day the milkweed is blossoming. Some of the
raspberries are ripe, the most innocent and simple of
fruits, the purest and most ethereal. Cherries are ripe.
Strawberries in the gardens have passed their prime.

Many large trees, especially elms, about a house are
a surer indication of old family distinction and worth
than any evidence of wealth. Any evidence of care
bestowed on these trees secures the traveller’s respect
as for a nobler husbandry than the raising of com and
potatoes.

I passed a regular country dooryard this forenoon,
the unpainted one-story house, long and low with pro¬
jecting stoop, a deep grass-plot unfenced for yard, hens
and chickens scratching amid the chip dirt about the
door, — this last the main feature, relics of wood-piles,
sites of the wooden towers.

The nightshade has bloomed and the prinos, or
winterberry.

282

JOURNAL

[July 5

July 5. The vetch-like flower by the Marlborough
road, the Tephrosia Virginica , is in blossom, with mixed
red and yellowish blossoms. Also the white fine-flow¬
ered Jersey tea ( Ceanothus Americana ), and, by the side
of wood-paths, the humble cow-wheat (Apocynum, etc.).
The blue flower by the roadside, slender but pretty
spike, is the pale lobelia (L. pallida ). The reddish
blossoms of the umbelled wintergreen (Pyrola umbel-
laia) are now in perfection and are exceedingly beauti¬
ful. Also the white sweet-scented flowers of the P.
rotundifolia.

It is a remarkably cool, clear, breezy atmosphere
to-day. One would say there were fewer flowers just
now than there have been and are to be; i. e. we do
not look so much for the blossoming of new flowers.
The earliest small fruits are just beginning to be ripe, —
the raspberry, thimble-berry, blueberry, etc. We have
no longer the blossoms of those which must ripen their
fruits in early autumn.

I am interested in those fields in the woods where the
potato is cultivated, growing in the light, dry, sandy
soil, free from weeds; now in blossom, the slight vine
not crowded in the hill. I think they do not promise
many potatoes, though mealy and wholesome like nuts.
Many fields have now received their last hoeing, and
the farmers’ work seems to be soon over with them.
What a pleasant interview he must have had with them!
What a liberal education with these professors! Better
than a university. It is pleasing to consider man’s
cultivating this plant thus assiduously, without reference
to any crop it may yield him, as if he were to cultivate

1851] HUBBARD’S BRIDGE 283

johnswort in like manner. What influences does he
receive from this long intercourse.

The flowers of the umbelled pyrola, or common
wintergreen, are really very handsome now, dangling
red from their little umbels like jewelry, — especially
the unexpanded buds with their red calyx-leaves against
the white globe of petals.

There is a handsome wood-path on the east side of
White Pond. The shadows of the pine stems and
branches falling across the path, which is perfectly
red with pine-needles, make a very handsome carpet.
Here is a small road running north and south along
the edge of the wood, which would be a good place to
walk by moonlight.

The calamint grows by the lane beyond Seven-Star
Lane; now in blossom.

As we come over Hubbard’s Bridge between 5 and
6 p. m., the sun getting low, a cool wind blowing up
the valley, we sit awhile on the rails which are destined
for the new railing. The light on the Indian hill is very
soft and glorious, giving the idea of the most wonderful
fertility. The most barren hills are gilded like waving
grain-fields. What a paradise to sail by! The cliffs and
woods up the stream are nearer and have more shadow
and actuality about them. This retired bridge is a favor¬
ite spot with me. I have witnessed many a fair sunset
from it.

July 6. Sunday . I walked by night last moon, and
saw its disk reflected in Walden Pond, the broken disk,
now here, now there, a pure and memorable flame

284

JOURNAL

[July 6

unearthly bright, like a cucullo 1 of a water-bug. Ah!
but that first faint tinge of moonlight on the gap ! (seen
some time ago),2 — a silvery light from the east before
day had departed in the west. What an immeasurable
interval there is between the first tinge of moonlight
which we detect, lighting with mysterious, silvery, poetic
light the western slopes, like a paler grass, and the last
wave of daylight on the eastern slopes ! It is wonderful
how our senses ever span so vast an interval, how from
being aware of the one we become aware of the other.
And now the night wind blows, — from where ? What
gave it birth? It suggests an interval equal to that
between the most distant periods recorded in history.
The silver age is not more distant from the golden than
moonlight is from sunlight. I am looking into the west,
where the red clouds still indicate the course of departing
day. I turn and see the silent, spiritual, contemplative
moonlight shedding the softest imaginable light on the
western slopes of the hills, as if, after a thousand years
of polishing, their surfaces were just beginning to be
bright, — a pale whitish lustre. Already the crickets
chirp to the moon a different strain, and the night
wind rustles the leaves of the wood. A different dynasty
has commenced. Yet moonlight, like daylight, is more
valuable for what it suggests than for what it actually is.
It is a long past season of which I dream. And the
reason is perchance because it is a more sacred and
glorious season, to which I instantly refer all glorious
actions in past time. Let a nobler landscape present
itself, let a purer air blow, and I locate all the worthies
1 [See p. 252.] a [Night of June 12. See p. 249.]

SAM, THE JAILER

285

1851]

of the world. Ah, there is the mysterious light which
for some hours has illustrated Asia and the scene of
Alexander’s victories, now at length, after two or three
hours spent in surmounting the billows of the Atlantic,
come to shine on America. There, on that illustrated
sand-bank, was revealed an antiquity beside which
Nineveh is young. Such a light as sufficed for the
earliest ages. From what star has it arrived on this
planet ? Yet even at midday I see the full moon shin¬
ing in the sky. What if, in some vales, only its light
is reflected ? What if there are some spirits which walk
in its light alone still ? who separate the moonlight from
the sunlight, and are shined on by the former only ? I
passed from dynasty to dynasty, from one age of the
world to another age of the world, from Jove per¬
chance back to Saturn. What river of Lethe was
there to run between? I bade farewell to that light
setting in the west and turned to salute the new light
rising in the east.

There is some advantage in being the humblest,
cheapest, least dignified man in the village, so that the
very stable boys shall damn you. Methinks I enjoy
that advantage to an unusual extent. There is many a
coarsely well-meaning fellow, who knows only the skin
of me, who addresses me familiarly by my Christian
name. I get the whole good of him and lose nothing
myself. There is “Sam,” the jailer, — whom I never
call Sam, however, — who exclaimed last evening:
“ Thoreau, are you going up the street pretty soon?
Well, just take a couple of these handbills along and
drop one in at Hoar’s piazza and one at Holbrook’s,

286 JOURNAL [July 6

and I’ll do as much for you another time.” I am not
above being used, aye abused, sometimes.

The red clover heads are now turned black. They no
longer impart that rosaceous tinge to the meadows and
fertile fields. It is but a short time that their rich bloom
lasts. The white is black or withering also. Whiteweed
still looks white in the fields. Blue-eyed grass is now
rarely seen. The grass in the fields and meadows is not
so fresh and fair as it was a fortnight ago. It is dryer
and riper and ready for the mowers. Now June is past.
June is the month for grass and flowers. Now grass
is turning to hay, and flowers to fruits. Already I gather
ripe blueberries on the hills. The red-topped grass is
in its prime, tingeing the fields with red.

It is a free, flowing wind, with wet clouds in the sky,
though the sun shines. The distant hills look unusually
near in this atmosphere. Acton meeting-houses seen
to stand on the side of some hills, Nagog or Nashoba,
beyond, as never before. Nobscot looks like a high
pasture in the sunlight not far off. From time to time
I hear a few drops of rain falling on the leaves, but none
is felt and the sun does not cease to shine. All serious
showers go round me and get out of my way.

The clasping harebell is certainly a pretty flower, and
so is the tephrosia. The poke has blossomed and the
indigo-weed.

July 7. The intimations of the night are divine,
methinks. Men might meet in the morning and report
the news of the night, — what divine suggestions have
been made to them. I find that I carry with me into

SHADOWS OF TREES

287

1851]

the day often some such hint derived from the gods, —
such impulses to purity, to heroism, to literary effort
even, as are never day-bom.1

One of those mornings which usher in no day, but
rather an endless morning, a protracted auroral sea¬
son, for clouds prolong the twilight the livelong day.

And now that there is an interregnum in the blossom¬
ing of the flowers, so is there in the singing of the birds.
The golden robin is rarely heard, and the bobolink, etc.

I rejoice when in a dream I have loved virtue and
nobleness.

Where is Grecian history ? It is when in the morning
I recall the intimations of the night.

The moon is now more than half full. When I come
through the village at 10 o’clock this cold night, cold
as in May, the heavy shadows of the elms covering the
ground with their rich tracery impress me as if men
had got so much more than they had bargained for,
not only trees to stand in the air, but to checker the
ground with their shadows. At night they lie along
the earth. They tower, they arch, they droop over the
streets like chandeliers of darkness. In my walk the
other afternoon, I saw the sun shining into the depths
of a thick pine wood, checkering the ground like moon¬
light and illuminating the lichen-covered bark of a
large white pine, from which it was reflected through
the surrounding thicket as from another sun. This
was so deep in the woods that you would have said no
sun could penetrate thither. *

1 [See pp. 213, 214.]

288

JOURNAL

[July 7

I have been to-night with Anthony Wright to look
through Perez Blood’s telescope a second time. A
dozen of Blood’s neighbors were swept along in the
stream of our curiosity. One who lived half a mile this
side said that Blood had been down that way within
a day or two with his terrestrial, or day, glass, looking
into the eastern horizon [at] the hills of Billerica, Bur¬
lington, and Woburn. I was amused to see what sort
of respect this man with a telescope had obtained from
his neighbors, something akin to that which savages
award to civilized men, though in this case the interval
between the parties was very slight. Mr. Blood, with
his skull-cap on, his short figure, his north European
figure, made me think of Tycho Brahe. He did not
invite us into his house this cool evening, — men nor
women, — nor did he ever before to my knowledge. I
am still contented to see the stars with my naked eye.
Mr. Wright asked him what his instrument cost. He
answered, “ Well, that is something I don’t like to tell.”
(Stuttering or hesitating in his speech a little as usual.)
“It is a very proper question, however.” “Yes,” said
I, “and you think that you have given a very proper
answer.”

Returning, my companion, Wright, the sexton, told
me how dusty he found it digging a grave that after¬
noon, — for one who had been a pupil of mine. For
two feet, he said, notwithstanding the rain, he found
the soil as dry as ashes.

With a certain wariness, but not without a slight
shudder at the danger oftentimes, I perceive how near
I had come to admitting into my mind the details of

1851] THE CHASTITY OF THE MIND 289

some trivial affair, as a case at court; and I am as¬
tonished to observe how willing men are to lumber
their minds with such rubbish, — to permit idle ru¬
mors, tales, incidents, even of an insignificant kind, to
intrude upon what should be the sacred ground of the
thoughts. Shall the temple of our thought be a public
arena where the most trivial affairs of the market and
the gossip of the tea-table is discussed, — a dusty, noisy,
trivial place ? Or shall it be a quarter of heaven itself, a
place consecrated to the service of the gods, a hypaethral
temple ? I find it so difficult to dispose of the few facts
which to me are significant, that I hesitate to burden
my mind with the most insignificant, which only a divine
mind could illustrate. Such is, for the most part, the news,
— in newspapers and conversation. It is important to
preserve the mind’s chastity in this respect. Think of
admitting the details of a single case of the criminal
court into the mind, to stalk profanely through its very
sanctum sanctorum for an hour, aye, for many hours!
to make a very bar-room of your mind’s inmost apart¬
ment, as if for a moment the dust of the street had oc¬
cupied you, aye, the very street itself, with all its travel,
passed through your very mind of minds, your thoughts’
shrine, with all its filth and bustle! Would it not be
an intellectual suicide? By all manner of boards and
traps, threatening the extreme penalty of the divine
law, excluding trespassers from these grounds, it be¬
hooves us to preserve the purity and sanctity of the
mind.1 It is so hard to forget what it is worse than
useless to remember. If I am to be a channel or thor-
1 [Charming, p. 85.]

290

JOURNAL

[July 7

oughfare, I prefer that it be of the mountain springs,
and not the town sewers, — the Parnassian streams.
There is inspiration, the divine gossip which comes
to the ear of the attentive mind from the courts of
heaven; there is the profane and stale revelation of the
bar-room and the police court. The same ear is fitted
to receive both communications. Only the character
of the individual determines to which source chiefly
it shall be open and to which closed. I believe that
the mind can be profaned by the habit of attending to
trivial things, so that all our thoughts shall be tinged
with triviality. They shall be dusty as stones in the
street. Our very minds shall be paved and macadam¬
ized, as it were, their foundation broken into fragments
for the wheels of travel to roll over. If we have thus
desecrated ourselves, the remedy will be, by circum¬
spection and wariness, by our aspiration and devotion,
to consecrate ourselves, to make a fane of the mind.
I think that we should treat our minds as innocent
and ingenuous children whose guardians we are, — be
careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on
their attention. Even the facts of science may dust the
mind by their dryness, unless they are in a sense effaced
each morning, or rather rendered fertile by the dews
of fresh and living truth. Every thought that passes
through the mind helps to wear and tear it, and to
deepen the ruts, which, as in the streets of Pompeii,
evince how much it has been used. How many things
there are concerning which we might well deliberate
whether we had better know them ! 1 Routine, conven-
1 [Cape Cod , and Miscellanies, pp. 473-476; Misc., Riv. 276-279.]

1851] THE UNSOPHISTICATED MIND 291

tionality, manners, etc., etc., — how insensibly an un¬
due attention to these dissipates and impoverishes the
mind, robs it of its simplicity and strength, emascu¬
lates it!

Knowledge does not come to us by details but by
lieferungs from the gods. What else is it to wash and
purify ourselves ? Conventionalities are as bad as im¬
purities.1 Only thought which is expressed by the mind
in repose — as it were, lying on its back and con¬
templating the heavens — is adequately and fully ex¬
pressed. What are sidelong, transient, passing half¬
views? The writer expressing his thought must be
as well seated as the astronomer contemplating the
heavens; he must not occupy a constrained position.
The facts, the experience, we are well poised upon!
which secures our whole attention !

The senses of children are unprofaned. Their whole
body is one sense; they take a physical pleasure in
riding on a rail, they love to teeter. So does the unvio¬
lated, the unsophisticated mind derive an inexpressible
pleasure from the simplest exercise of thoughts.

I can express adequately only the thought which I
love to express. All the faculties in repose but the one
you are using, the whole energy concentrated in that.
Be ever so little distracted, your thoughts so little con¬
fused, your engagements so few, your attention so free,
your existence so mundane, that in all places and in all
hours you can hear the sound of crickets in those seasons
when they are to be heard. It is a mark of serenity and
health of mind when a person hears this sound much,

1 [Cape Cod , and Miscellanies , pp. 475, 476; Misc., Riv. 279.]

292

JOURNAL

[July 7

— in streets of cities as well as in fields. Some ears
never hear this sound; are called deaf. Is it not because
they have so long attended to other sounds ?

Judy 8. Tuesday. Walked along the Clamshell bank
after sundown. A cloudy sky. The heads of the grass
in the pasture behind Dennis’s have a reddish cast,
but another grass, with a fighter-colored stem and
leaves, on the higher parts of the field gives a yel¬
lowish tinge to those parts, as if they reflected a misty
sunlight. Even much later in the night these fight spots
were distinguishable. I am struck by the cool, juicy,
pickled-cucumber green of the potato-fields now. How
lusty these vines look! The pasture naturally exhibits

Oat this season no such living green as the
cultivated fields. I perceive that flower of the
lowlands now, with a peculiar leaf and con¬
spicuous white umbels.1

Here are mulleins covering a field (the Clamshell
field) where three years [ago] were none noticeable,
but a smooth uninterrupted pasture sod. Two years
ago it was plowed for the first time for many years,
and millet and corn and potatoes planted, and now
where the millet grew these mulleins have sprung up.
Who can write the history of these fields ? The millet
does not perpetuate itself, but the few seeds of the mul¬
lein, which perchance were brought here with it, are
still multiplying the race.

The thick heads of the yellow dock warn me of the
lapse of time.

1 Rue [i. e. meadow-rue].

A RYE-FIELD

293

1851]

Here are some rich rye-fields waving over all the land,
their heads nodding in the evening breeze with an ap¬
parently alternating motion; i. e. they do not all bend
at once by ranks, but separately, and hence this agree¬
able alternation. How rich a sight this cereal fruit,
now yellow for the cradle, — flavus I It is an impene¬
trable phalanx. I walk for half a mile beside these
Macedonians, looking in vain for an opening. There
is no Arnold Winkelried to gather these spear-heads
upon his breast and make an opening for me. This is
food for man. The earth labors not in vain ; it is bearing
its burden. The yellow, waving, rustling rye extends far
up and over the hills on either side, a kind of pinafore to
nature, leaving only a narrow and dark passage at the
bottom of a deep ravine. How rankly it has grown!
How it hastes to maturity ! I discover that there is such
a goddess as Ceres. These long grain-fields which you
must respect, — must go round, — occupying the ground
like an army. The small trees and shrubs seen dimly
in its midst are overwhelmed by the grain as by an
inundation. They are seen only as indistinct forms of
bushes and green leaves mixed with the yellow stalks.
There are certain crops which give me the idea of bounty,
of the Alma Natura.1 They are the grains. Potatoes
do not so fill the lap of earth. This rye excludes every¬
thing else and takes possession of the soil. The farmer
says, “Next year I will raise a crop of rye;” and he
proceeds to clear away the brush, and either plows it,
or, if it is too uneven or stony, burns and harrows it
only, and scatters the seed with faith. And all winter
1 [See Journal , vol. i, p. 59.]

294

JOURNAL

[July 8

the earth keeps his secret, — unless it did leak out some¬
what in the fall, — and in the spring this early green on
the hillsides betrays him. When I see this luxuriant
crop spreading far and wide in spite of rock and bushes
and unevenness of ground, I cannot help thinking that
it must have been unexpected by the farmer himself,
and regarded by him as a lucky accident for which to
thank fortune. This, to reward a transient faith, the
gods had given. As if he must have forgotten that he
did it, until he saw the waving grain inviting his sickle.

July 9. When I got out of the cars at Porter’s, Cam¬
bridge, this morning, I was pleased to see the handsome
blue flowers of the succory or endive ( Cichorium Intybus ),
which reminded me that within the hour I had been
whirled into a new botanical region. They must be
extremely rare, if they occur at all, in Concord. This
weed is handsomer than most garden flowers. Saw
there also the Cucubalus Behen, or bladder campion,
also the autumnal dandelion ( Apargia autumnalis).

Visited the Observatory. Bond said they were cata¬
loguing the stars at Washington ( ?), or trying to. They
do not at Cambridge; of no use with their force. Have
not force enough now to make magfnetic] observations].
When I asked if an observer with the small telescope
could find employment, he said. Oh yes, there was em¬
ployment enough for observation with the naked eye,
observing the changes in the brilliancy of stars, etc., etc.,
if they could only get some good observers. One is glad
to hear that the naked eye still retains some importance
in the estimation of astronomers.

CHARLES RIVER

295

1851]

Coming out of town, — willingly as usual, — when
I saw that reach of Charles River just above the depot,
the fair, still water this cloudy evening suggesting the
way to eternal peace and beauty, whence it flows, the
placid, lake-like fresh water, so unlike the salt brine,
affected me not a little. I was reminded of the way in
which Wordsworth so coldly speaks of some natural
visions or scenes “ giving him pleasure.” This is perhaps
the first vision of elysium on this route from Boston.
And just then I saw an encampment of Penobscots,
their wigwams appearing above the railroad fence,
they, too, looking up the river as they sat on the ground,
and enjoying the scene. What can be more impressive
than to look up a noble river just at evening, — one,
perchance, which you have never explored, — and be¬
hold its placid waters, reflecting the woods and sky,
lapsing inaudibly toward the ocean; to behold as a lake,
but know it as a river, tempting the beholder to explore
it and his own destiny at once? Haunt of waterfowl.
This was above the factories, — all that I saw. That
water could never have flowed under a factory. How
then could it have reflected the sky?

July 10. A gorgeous sunset after rain, with horizontal
bars of clouds, red sashes to the western window, barry
clouds hanging like a curtain over the window of the
west, damask. First there is a low arch of the storm
clouds in the west, under which is seen the clearer,
fairer, serener sky and more distant sunset clouds, and
under all, on the horizon’s edge, heavier, massive dark
clouds, not to be distinguished from the mountains.

296

JOURNAL

[July 10

How many times I have seen this kind of sunset, — the
most gorgeous sight in nature! From the hill behind
Minott’s I see the birds flying against this red sky, the
sun having set; one looks like a bat. Now between two
stupendous mountains of the low stratum under the
evening red, clothed in slightly rosaceous amber light,
through a magnificent gorge, far, far away, as perchance
may occur in pictures of the Spanish coast viewed from
the Mediterranean, I see a city, the eternal city of the
west, the phantom city, in whose streets no traveller has
trod, over whose pavements the horses of the sun have
already hurried, some Salamanca of the imagination.
But it lasts only for a moment, for now the changing
light has wrought such changes in it that I see the re¬
semblance no longer.

A softer amber sky than in any picture. The swallows
are improving this short day, twittering as they fly, and
the huckleberry-bird 1 repeats his jingling strain, and
the song sparrow, more honest than most.

I am always struck by the centrality of the observer’s
position. He always stands fronting the middle of the
arch, and does not suspect at first that a thousand ob¬
servers on a thousand hills behold the sunset sky from
equally favorable positions.

And now I turn and observe the dark masses of the
trees in the east, not green but black. While the sun
was setting in the west, the trees were rising in the east.

I perceive that the low stratum of dark clouds under

1 [Thoreau’s name for the field sparrow ( Spizella pusiUa , or, as it
was called by Nuttall, FringiUa juncorum). He had the name from
his old friend Minott.]

297

1851] THE FORMS OF CLOUDS

the red sky all dips one way, and to a remarkable degree
presents the appearance of the butt ends of cannons
slanted toward the sky, thus: —

Such uniformity on a large scale is unexpected and plea¬
sant to detect, evincing the simplicity of the laws of
their formation. Uniformity in the shapes of clouds of
a single stratum is always to be detected, the same wind
shaping clouds of the like consistency and in like posi¬
tions. No doubt an experienced observer could discover
the states of the upper atmosphere by studying the forms
and characters of the clouds. I traced the distinct form
of the cannon in seven instances, stretching over the
whole length of the cloud, many a mile in the horizon.

And the nighthawk dashes past in the twilight with
mottled ( ?) wing, within a rod of me.

July 11. Friday. At 7.15 p. m. with W. E. C. go
forth to see the moon, the glimpses of the moon. We
think she is not quite full; we can detect a little flatness
on the eastern side. Shall we wear thick coats ? The day
has been warm enough, but how cool will the night be ?
It is not sultry, as the last night. As a general rule, it
is best to wear your thickest coat even in a July night.
Which way shall we walk? Northwest, that we may
see the moon returning ? But on that side the river pre¬
vents our walking in the fields, and on other accounts
that direction is not so attractive. We go toward Bear

298

JOURNAL

[July 11

Garden Hill. The sun is setting. The meadow-sweet
has bloomed. These dry hills and pastures are the
places to walk by moonlight. The moon is silvery still,
not yet inaugurated. The tree-tops are seen against
the amber west. I seem to see the outlines of one spruce
among them, distinguishable afar. My thoughts expand
and flourish most on this barren hill, where in the
twilight I see the moss spreading in rings and prevailing
over the short, thin grass, carpeting the earth, adding
a few inches of green to its circle annually while it dies
within.

As we round the sandy promontory, we try the sand
and rocks with our hands. The sand is cool on the sur¬
face but warmer a few inches beneath, though the con¬
trast is not so great as it was in May. The larger rocks
are perceptibly warm. I pluck the blossom of the milk¬
weed in the twilight and find how sweet it smells. The
white blossoms of the Jersey tea dot the hillside, with
the yarrow everywhere. Some woods are black as clouds ;
if we knew not they were green by day, they would appear
blacker still. When we sit, we hear the mosquitoes hum.
The woodland paths are not the same by night as by
day; if they are a little grown up, the eye cannot find
them, but must give the reins to the feet, as the traveller
to his horse. So we went through the aspens at the base
of the Cliffs, their round leaves reflecting the lingering
twilight on the one side, the waxing moonlight on the
other. Always the path was unexpectedly open.

Now we are getting into moonlight. We see it re¬
flected from particular stumps in the depths of the
darkest woods, and from the stems of trees, as if it

1851] THE LIGHT OF THE MOON 299

selected what to shine on,1 — a silvery light. It is a light,
of course, which we have had all day, but which we
have not appreciated, and proves how remarkable a
lesser light can be when a greater has departed. How
simply and naturally the moon presides ! ’T is true she
was eclipsed by the sun, but now she acquires an almost
equal respect and worship by reflecting and represent¬
ing him, with some new quality, perchance, added to his
light, showing how original the disciple may be who still
in midday is seen, though pale and cloud-like, beside
his master. Such is a worthy disciple. In his master’s
presence he still is seen and preserves a distinct exist¬
ence; and in his absence he reflects and represents
him, not without adding some new quality to his light,
not servile and never rival. As the master withdraws
himself, the disciple, who was a pale cloud before,
begins to emit a silvery light, acquiring at last a tinge
of golden as the darkness deepens, but not enough to
scorch the seeds which have been planted or to dry up
the fertilizing dews which are falling.

Passing now near Well Meadow Head toward Baker’s
orchard. The sweet-fern and indigo-weed fill the path
up to one’s middle, wetting us with dews so high. The
leaves are shining and flowing.2 We wade through the
luxuriant vegetation, seeing no bottom. Looking back
toward the Cliffs, some dead trees in the horizon, high
on the rocks, make a wild New Hampshire prospect.
There is the faintest possible mist over the pond-holes,
where the frogs are eructating, like the falling of huge
drops, the bursting of mephitic air-bubbles rising from
1 [Excursions, p. 327; Riv. 402.] 2 [Excursionsf p. 327; Riv. 402.]

300

JOURNAL

[July 11

the bottom, a sort of blubbering, — such conversation
as I have heard between men, a belching conversation,
expressing a sympathy of stomachs and abdomens. The
peculiar appearance of the indigo-weed, its misty mas¬
siveness, is striking. In Baker’s orchard the thick grass
looks like a sea of mowing in this weird moonlight, a
bottomless sea of grass. Our feet must be imaginative,
must know the earth in imagination only, as well as our
heads. We sit on the fence, and, where it is broken and
interrupted, the fallen and slanting rails are lost in the
grass (really thin and wiry) as in water. We even see
our tracks a long way behind, where we have brushed
off the dew. The clouds are peculiarly wispy to-night,
somewhat like fine flames, not massed and dark nor
downy, not thick, but slight, thin wisps of mist.

I hear the sound of Heywood’s Brook falling into
Fair Haven Pond, inexpressibly refreshing to my senses.
It seems to flow through my very bones. I hear it with
insatiable thirst. It allays some sandy heat in me. It
affects my circulations; methinks my arteries have
sympathy with it. What is it I hear but the pure water¬
falls within me, in the circulation of my blood, the
streams that fall into my heart ? What mists do I ever
see but such as hang over and rise from my blood?
The sound of this gurgling water, running thus by
night as by day, falls on all my dashes, fills all my
buckets, overflows my float-boards, turns all the ma¬
chinery of my nature, makes me a flume, a sluice-way,
to the springs of nature. Thus I am washed; thus I
drink and quench my thirst.1 Where the streams fall
1 [See p. 155.]

1851] A MOONLIGHT WALK 301

into the lake, if they are only a few inches more elevated,
all walkers may hear.

On the high path through Baker’s wood I see, or rather
feel, the tephrosia. Now we come out into the open
pasture. And under those woods of elm and button-
wood, where still no light is seen, repose a family of
human beings. By night there is less to distinguish this
locality from the woods and meadows we have threaded.
We might go very near to farmhouses covered with orna¬
mental trees and standing on a highroad, thinking that
[we] were in the most retired woods and fields still.
Having yielded to sleep, man is a less obtrusive inhabit¬
ant of nature. Now, having reached the dry pastures
again, we are surrounded by a flood of moonlight. The
dim cart-path over the sward curves gracefully through
the pitch pines, ever to some more fairy-like spot. The
rails in the fences shine like silver. We know not whether
we are sitting on the ruins of a wall, or the materials
which are to compose a new one. I see, half a mile off,
a phosphorescent arc on the hillside, where Bartlett’s
Cliff reflects the moonlight. Going by the shanty, I smell
the excrements of its inhabitants, which I had never
smelt before.

And now, at half-past 10 o’clock, I hear the cockerels
crow in Hubbard’s bams, and morning is already anti¬
cipated. It is the feathered, wakeful thought in us that
anticipates the following day. This sound is wonder¬
fully exhilarating at all times. These birds are worth
far more to me for their crowing and cackling than for
their drumsticks and eggs.1 How singular the connec-
1 [See Walden , pp. 140, 141; Riv. 199.]

302

JOURNAL

[July 11

tion of the hen with man, — that she leaves her eggs in
his bams always! She is a domestic fowl, though still
a little shyish of him. I cannot [help] looking at the
whole as an experiment still and wondering that in each
case it succeeds. There is no doubt at last but hens
may be kept. They will put their eggs in your bam by
a tacit agreement. They will not wander far from your
yard.

July 12. 8 p. m. — Now at least the moon is full,
and I walk alone, which is best by night, if not by day
always. Your companion must sympathize with the pre¬
sent mood. The conversation must be located where the
walkers are, and vary exactly with the scene and events
and the contour of the ground. Farewell to those who
will talk of nature unnaturally, whose presence is an
interruption. I know but one with whom I can walk.
I might as well be sitting in a bar-room with them as
walk and talk with most. We are never side by side in
our thoughts, and we cannot hear each other’s silence.
Indeed, we cannot be silent. We are forever breaking
silence, that is all, and mending nothing. How can they
keep together who are going different ways!

I start a sparrow from her three eggs in the grass,
where she had settled for the night. The earliest corn
is beginning to show its tassels now, and I scent it as
I walk, — its peculiar dry scent.1 (This afternoon I
gathered ripe blackberries, and felt as if the autumn
had commenced.) Now perchance many sounds and
sights only remind me that they once said something to
1 [Excursions, p. 827; Riv. 403.]

1851] ANOTHER MOONLIGHT WALK 303

me, and are so by association interesting. I go forth to
be reminded of a previous state of existence, if per¬
chance any memento of it is to be met with hereabouts.
I have no doubt that Nature preserves her integrity.
Nature is in as rude health as when Homer sang. We
may at last by our sympathies be well. I see a skunk
on Bear Garden Hill stealing noiselessly away from me,
while the moon shines over the pitch pines, which send
long shadows down the hill. Now, looking back, I see
it shining on the south side of farmhouses and barns
with a weird light, for I pass here half an hour later
than last night. I smell the huckleberry bushes. I hear
a human voice, — some laborer singing after his day’s
toil, — which I do not often hear. Loud it must be, for
it is far away. Methinks I should know it for a white
man’s voice. Some strains have the melody of an
instrument. Now I hear the sound of a bugle in the
“Corner,” reminding me of poetic wars; a few flour¬
ishes and the bugler has gone to rest. At the foot of the
Cliff hill I hear the sound of the clock striking nine, as
distinctly as within a quarter of a mile usually, though
there is no wind. The moonlight is more perfect than
last night; hardly a cloud in the sky, — only a few
fleecy ones. There is more serenity and more light. I
hear that sort of throttled or chuckling note as of a bird
flying high, now from this side, then from that.1 Me¬
thinks when I turn my head I see Wachusett from the
side of the hill. I smell the butter-and-eggs as I walk.
I am startled by the rapid transit of some wild ani¬
mal across my path, a rabbit or a fox, — or you hardly
1 [See Excursions, p. 326; Riv. 401.]

304

JOURNAL

[July 12

know if it be not a bird. Looking down from the cliffs,
the leaves of the tree-tops shine more than ever by day.
Here and there a lightning-bug shows his greenish light
over the tops of the trees.

As I return through the orchard, a foolish robin
bursts away from his perch unnaturally, with the habits
of man. The air is remarkably still and unobjection¬
able on the hilltop, and the whole world below is cov¬
ered as with a gossamer blanket of moonlight. It is
just about as yellow as a blanket. It is a great dimly
burnished shield with darker blotches on its surface.
You have lost some light, it is true, but you have got
this simple and magnificent stillness, brooding like
genius.1

July 13. Observed yesterday, while surveying near
Gordon’s, a bittern flying over near Gordon’s, with
moderate flight and outstretched neck, its breast¬
bone sticking out sharp like the bone in the throats
of some persons, its anatomy exposed. The evergreen
is very handsome in the woods now, rising somewhat
spirally in a round tower of five or six stories, sur¬
mounted by a long bud. Looking across the river to
Conantum from the open plains, I think how the his¬
tory of the hills would read, since they have been
pastured by cows, if every plowing and mowing and
sowing and chopping were recorded. I hear, 4 p. m.,
a pigeon woodpecker on a dead pine near by, utter¬
ing a harsh and scolding scream, spying me. The
chewink jingles on the tops of the bushes, and the rush
1 Vide [p. 837].

305

1851] EATING A RAW TURNIP

sparrow,1 the vireo, and oven-bird at a distance; and
a robin sings, superior to all; and a barking dog has
started something on the opposite side of the river;
and now the wood thrush surpasses them all. These
plains are covered with shrub oaks, birches, aspens,
hickories, mingled with sweet-fern and brakes and
huckleberry bushes and epilobium, now in bloom, and
much fine grass. The hellebore by the brooksides has
now fallen over, though it is not broken off. The cows
now repose and chew the cud under the shadow of a
tree, or crop the grass in the shade along the side of the
woods, and when you approach to observe them they
mind you just enough. I turn up the Juniperus repens ,
and see the lighter color of its leaves on the under sides,
and its berries with three petal-like divisions in one
end. The sweet-scented life-everlasting is budded.

This might be called the Hayer’s or Haymaker’s
Moon, for I perceive that when the day has been op¬
pressively warm the haymakers rest at noon and re¬
sume their mowing after sunset, sometimes quite into
evening.

July 14. Passing over the Great Fields (where I have
been surveying a road) this forenoon, where were some
early turnips, the county commissioners plucked and
pared them with their knives and ate them. I, too,
tried hard to chew a mouthful of raw turnip and realize
the life of cows and oxen, for it might be a useful habit
in extremities. These things occur as the seasons revolve.
These are things which travellers will do. How many
1 (The field sparrow. See Journal , vol. i, p. 252, note.]

306

JOURNAL

[July 14

men have tasted a raw turnip! How few have eaten a
whole one! Some bovine appetites, which find some
fodder in every field. For like reasons we sometimes
eat sorrel and say we love it, that we may return the
hospitality of Nature by exhibiting a good appetite.

The citizen looks sharp to see if there is any dogwood
or poison sumach in the swamp before he enters.

If I take the same walk by moonlight an hour later
or earlier in the evening, it is as good as a different one.
I love the night for its novelty; it is less prophaned
than the day.1

The creaking of the crickets seems at the very foun¬
dation of all sound. At last I cannot tell it from a ring¬
ing in my ears. It is a sound from within, not without.
You cannot dispose of it by listening to it. In propor¬
tion as I am stilled I hear it. It reminds me that I am
a denizen of the earth.

July 16. Wednesday. Methinks my present experi¬
ence is nothing; my past experience is all in all. I think
that no experience which I have to-day comes up to,
or is comparable with, the experiences of my boyhood.
And not only this is true, but as far back as I can re¬
member I have unconsciously referred to the experi¬
ences of a previous state of existence. “For life is a
forgetting,” etc. Formerly, methought, nature devel¬
oped as I developed, and grew up with me. My life
was ecstasy. In youth, before I lost any of my senses,
I can remember that I was all alive, and inhabited
my body with inexpressible satisfaction; both its weari-
1 [Excursions, p. 323; Riv. 398.]

1851] THE EXPERIENCE OF ECSTASY 307

ness and its refreshment were sweet to me. This earth
was the most glorious musical instrument, and I was
audience to its strains. To have such sweet impres¬
sions made on us, such ecstasies begotten of the breezes !
I can remember how I was astonished. I said to my¬
self, — I said to others, — “ There comes into my mind
such an indescribable, infinite, all-absorbing, divine,
heavenly pleasure, a sense of elevation and expansion,
and [I] have had nought to do with it. I perceive that
I am dealt with by superior powers.1 This is a pleasure,
a joy, an existence which I have not procured myself.
I speak as a witness on the stand, and tell what I have
perceived.” The morning and the evening were sweet
to me, and I led a life aloof from society of men. I won¬
dered if a mortal had ever known what I knew. I looked
in books for some recognition of a kindred experience,
but, strange to say, I found none. Indeed, I was slow
to discover that other men had had this experience, for
it had been possible to read books and to associate with
men on other grounds. The maker of me was improving
me. When I detected this interference I was profoundly
moved. For years I marched as to a music in compari¬
son with which the military music of the streets is noise
and discord. I was daily intoxicated, and yet no man
could call me intemperate. With all your science can
you tell how it is, and whence it is, that light comes into
the soul ?

Set out at 3 p. m. for Nine-Acre Corner Bridge via
Hubbard’s Bridge and Conantum, returning via Dash¬
ing Brook, rear of Baker’s, and railroad at 6.30 p. m.

1 [Charming, p.‘ 84.]

308

JOURNAL

[July 16

The song sparrow, the most familiar and New Eng¬
land bird, is heard in fields and pastures, setting this
midsummer day to music, as if it were the music of a
mossy rail or fence post; a little stream of song, cooling,
rippling through the noon, — the usually unseen song¬
ster usually unheard like the cricket, it is so common, —
like the poet’s song, unheard by most men, whose ears
are stopped with business, though perchance it sang on
the fence before the farmer’s house this morning for an
hour. There are little strains of poetiy in our animals.

Berries are just beginning to ripen, and children are
planning expeditions after them. They are important
as introducing children to the fields and woods, and as
wild fruits of which much account is made. During
the berry season the schools have a vacation, and many
little fingers are busy picking these small fruits. It is
ever a pastime, not a drudgery. I remember how glad
I was when I was kept from school a half a day to
pick huckleberries on a neighboring hill all by myself
to make a pudding for the family dinner. Ah, they got
nothing but the pudding, but I got invaluable experi¬
ence beside! A half a day of liberty like that was like
the promise of life eternal. It was emancipation in
New England. O, what a day was there, my country¬
men!

I see the yellow butterflies now gathered in fleets in
the road, and on the flowers of the milkweed ( Asclepias
pulchra) by the roadside, a really handsome flower; also
the smaller butterfly, with reddish wings, and a larger,
black or steel-blue, with wings spotted red on edge, and
one of equal size, reddish copper-colored. Now you may

SIGNS OF THE SEASON

309

1851]

see a boy stealing after one, hat in hand. The earliest
corn begins to tassel out, and my neighbor has put his
hand in the hill some days ago and abstracted some
new potatoes as big as nuts, then covered up again.
Now they will need — or will get — no more weeding.
The lark sings in the meadow; the very essence of the
afternoon is in his strain. This is a New England sound,
but the cricket is heard under all sounds. Still the cars
come and go with the regularity of nature, of the sun and
moon. (If a hen puts her eggs elsewhere than in the
barns, — in woods or among rocks, — she is said to
steal her nest !) The twittering of swallows is in the air,
reminding me of water. The meadow-sweet is now in
bloom, and the yarrow prevails by all roadsides. I see
the hardhack too, homely but dear plant, just opening
its red clustered flowers. The small aster, too, now
abounds (. Aster miser)' and the tall buttercup still.
After wading through a swamp the other day with my
shoes in my hand, I wiped my feet with sassafras leaves,
which reminded me of some Arabian practices, the
bruised leaves perfuming the air and by their softness
being adapted to this purpose. The tree-primrose, or
scabish, still is seen over the fence. The red-wings and
crow blackbirds are heard chattering on the trees, and
the cow troopials are accompanying the cows in the
pastures for the sake of the insects they scare up. Often¬
times the thoughtless sportsman has lodged his charge
of shot in the cow’s legs or body in his eagerness to ob¬
tain the birds. St. John’s-wort, one of the first of yellow
flowers, begins to shine along the roadside. The mul-
1 [This is queried in pencil. See p. 278.]

310

JOURNAL

[July 16

lein for some time past. I see a farmer cradling his rye,
John Potter. Fields are partly mown, — some English
grass on the higher parts of the meadow next to the road.
The farmer’s work comes not all at once. In haying
time there is a cessation from other labors to a con¬
siderable extent. Planting is done, and hoeing mainly;
only some turnip seed is to be scattered amid the corn.
I hear the kingbird twittering or chattering like a stout¬
chested swallow. The prunella sends back a blue ray
from under my feet as I walk; the pale lobelia too. The
plaintive, spring-restoring peep of a bluebird is occa¬
sionally heard. I met loads of hay on the road, which
the oxen draw indifferently, swaggering in their gait, as
if it were not fodder for them. Methinks they should
testify sometimes that they are working for themselves.
The whiteweed is turning black. Grapes are half grown
and lead the mind forward to autumn. It is an air this
afternoon that makes you indifferent to all things, —
perfect summer, but with a comfortable breeziness.
You know not heat nor cold. What season of the year
is this ? The balls of the button-bush are half formed,
with its fine, glossy, red-stemmed leaf atoning for its
nakedness in the spring. My eye ranges over green
fields of oats, for which there is a demand then some¬
where. The wild rose peeps from amid the alders and
other shrubs by the roadside. The elder-blow fills the
air with its scent. The angelica, with its large umbels, is
gone to seed. On it I find one of those slow-moving
green worms, with rings spotted black and yellow, like
an East Indian production. What if these grew as large
as elephants ? The honest and truly fair is more mod-

311

1851] SIGNS OF THE SEASON

estly colored. Notwithstanding the drifting clouds,
you fear no rain to-day. As you walk, you smell some
sweet herbage, but detect not what it is. Hay is stick¬
ing to the willows and the alders on the causeway, and
the bridge is sprinkled with it. The hemlock (Cicuta
Americana) displays its white umbels now. The yellow
lilies reign in the river. The painted tortoises drop off
the willow stumps as you go over the bridge. The river
is now so low that you can see its bottom, shined on by
the sun, and travellers stop to look at fishes as they go
over, leaning on the rails. The pickerel-weed sends
up its heavenly blue. The color of the cows on Fair
Haven Hill, how fair a contrast to the hillside! How
striking and wholesome their clean brick-red! When
were they painted? How carelessly the eye rests on
them, or passes them by as things of course ! The tansy
is budded. The devil’s-needles seem to rest in air over
the water. There is nothing New-English about them.

Now, at 4 p. m., I hear the pewee in the woods, and
the cuckoo reminds me of some silence among the birds
I had not noticed. The vireo (red-eyed?) sings like a
robin at even, incessantly, — for I have now turned
into Conant’s woods. The oven-bird helps fill some
pauses. The poison sumach shows its green berries,
now unconscious of guilt. The heart-leaved loosestrife
(Lysimachia ciliata) is seen in low open woods. The
breeze displays the white under sides of the oak leaves
and gives a fresh and flowing look to the woods. The
river is a dark-blue winding stripe amid the green of the
meadow. What is the color of the world ? Green mixed
with yellowish and reddish for hills and ripe grass, and

312

JOURNAL

[July 16

darker green for trees and forests; blue spotted with
dark and white for sky and clouds, and dark blue for
water. Beyond the old house I hear the squirrel chirp
in the wall like a sparrow; so Nature merges her crea¬
tions into one. I am refreshed by the view of Nobscot
and the southwestern vales, from Conantum, seething
with the blue element. Here comes a small bird with a
ricochet flight and a faint twittering note like a mes¬
senger from Elysium. The rush sparrow jingles her
small change, pure silver, on the counter of the pasture.
From far I see the rye stacked up. A few dead trees
impart the effect of wildness to the landscape, though
it is a feature rare in an old settled country.

Methinks this is the first of dog-days. The air in the
distance has a peculiar blue mistiness, or fumace-like
look, though, as I have said, it is not sultry yet. It is
not the season for distant views. Mountains are not
clearly blue now. The air is the opposite to what it is
in October and November. You are not inclined to
travel. It is a world of orchards and small-fruits now,
and you can stay at home if the well has cool water in
it. The black thimble-berry is an honest, homely berry,
now drying up as usual. I used to have a pleasant time
stringing them on herd’s-grass stems, tracing the wall-
sides for them. It is pleasant to walk through these
elevated fields, terraced upon the side of the hill so that
the eye of the walker looks off into the blue cauldron
of the air at his own level. Here the haymakers have
just gone to tea, — at 5 o’clock, the farmer’s hour, be¬
fore the afternoon is ended, while he still thinks much
work may still be done before night. He does not wait

PITCH PINE WOODS

313

1851]

till he is strongly reminded of the night. In the distance
some burdened fields are black with haycocks. Some
thoughtless and cruel sportsman has killed twenty-two
young partridges not much bigger than robins, against
the laws of Massachusetts and humanity. At the Cor¬
ner Bridge the white lilies are budded. Green apples
are now so large as to remind me of coddling and the
autumn again.1 The season of fruits is arrived. The
dog’s-bane has a pretty, delicate bell-like flower. The
Jersey tea abounds. I see the marks of the scythes
in the fields, showing the breadth of each swath the
mowers cut. Cool springs are now a desideratum. The
geranium still hangs on. Even the creeping vines love
the brooks, and I see where one slender one has strug¬
gled down and dangles into the current, which rocks it
to and fro. Filberts are formed, and you may get the
berry stains out of your hands with their husks, if you
have any. Nightshade is in blossom. Came through the
pine plains behind James Baker’s, where late was open
pasture, now open pitch pine woods, only here and there
the grass has given place to a carpet of pine-needles.
These are among our pleasantest woods, — open, level,
with blackberry vines interspersed and flowers, as lady’s-
slippers, earlier, and pinks on the outskirts. Each tree
has room enough. And now I hear the wood thrush
from the shade, who loves these pine woods as well as
I. I pass by Walden’s scalloped shore. The epilobium
reflects a pink gleam up the vales and down the hills.
The chewink jingles on a bush’s top. Why will the
Irishman drink of a puddle by the railroad instead of
1 [ Excursions , p. 294; Riv. 361.]

314

JOURNAL

[July 16

digging a well ? How shiftless! What death in life! He
cannot be said to live who does not get pure water.

The milkweeds, or silkweeds, are rich flowers, now in
blossom. The Asclepias syriaca, or common milkweed ;
its buds fly open at a touch. But handsomer much is
Asclepias pulchra , or water silkweed. The thin green
bark of this last, and indeed of the other, is so strong
that a man cannot break a small strip of it by pulling.
It contains a mass of fine silken fibres, arranged side
by side like the strings of a fiddle-bow, and may be bent
short without weakening it.

What more glorious condition of being can we im¬
agine than from impure to be becoming pure? It is
almost desirable to be impure that we may be the sub¬
ject of this improvement. That I am innocent to my¬
self! That I love and reverence my life! That I am
better fitted for a lofty society to-day than I was yester¬
day! To make my life a sacrament! What is nature
without this lofty tumbling? May I treat myself with
more and more respect and tenderness. May I not for¬
get that I am impure and vicious. May I not cease to
love purity. May I go to my slumbers as expecting to
arise to a new and more perfect day. May I so live and
refine my life as fitting myself for a society ever higher
than I actually enjoy. May I treat myself tenderly as
I would treat the most innocent child whom I love;
may I treat children and my friends as my newly dis¬
covered self. Let me forever go in search of myself;
never for a moment think that I have found myself;
be as a stranger to myself, never a familiar, seeking

THE IDEAL SELF

315

1851]

acquaintance still. May I be to myself as one is to me
whom I love, a dear and cherished object. What tem¬
ple, what fane, what sacred place can there be but the
innermost part of my own being? The possibility of
my own improvement, that is to be cherished. As I
regard myself, so I am. O my dear friends, I have not
foigotten you. I will know you to-morrow. I associate
you with my ideal self. I had ceased to have faith in
myself. I thought I was grown up and become what
I was intended to be, but it is earliest spring with me.
In relation to virtue and innocence the oldest man is
in the beginning spring and vernal season of life. It
is the love of virtue makes us young ever. That is
the fountain of youth, the very aspiration after the
perfect. I love and worship myself with a love which
absorbs my love for the world. The lecturer suggested
to me that I might become better than I am. Was
it not a good lecture, then ? May I dream not that I
shunned vice; may I dream that I loved and practiced
virtue.

July 18. It is a test question affecting the youth of a
person, — Have you knowledge of the morning ? Do
you sympathize with that season of nature? Are you
abroad early, brushing the dews aside ? If the sun rises
on you slumbering, if you do not hear the morning
cock-crow, if you do not witness the blushes of Aurora,
if you are not acquainted with Venus as the morning
star, what relation have you to wisdom and purity?
You have then forgotten your Creator in the days of
your youth! Your shutters were darkened till noon!

316

JOURNAL

[July 18

You rose with a sick headache! In the morning sing,
as do the birds. What of those birds which should
slumber on their perches till the sun was an hour
high ? What kind of fowl would they be and new kind
of bats and owls, — hedge sparrows or larks ? then
took a dish of tea or hot coffee before they began to
sing?

I might have added to the list of July 16th the Aralia
hispida , bristling aralia; the heart-leaved loosestrife
(Lysimachia ciliata ); also the upright loosestrife ( L .
racemosa ), with a rounded terminal raceme; the tufted
vetch ( Vida cracca). Sweet-gale fruit now green.

I first heard the locust sing, so dry and piercing, by
the side of the pine woods in the heat of the day.

July 19. Here I am thirty-four years old,1 and yet
my life is almost wholly unexpanded. How much is in
the germ! There is such an interval between my ideal
and the actual in many instances that I may say I am
unborn. There is the instinct for society, but no society.
Life is not long enough for one success. Within another
thirty-four years that miracle can hardly take place.
Methinks my seasons revolve more slowly than those
of nature; I am differently timed. I am contented.
This rapid revolution of nature, even of nature in me,
why should it hurry me ? Let a man step to the music
which he hears, however measured. Is it important that
I should mature as soon as an apple tree ? aye, as soon
as an oak ? May not my fife in nature, in proportion as
it is supernatural, be only the spring and infantile por-
1 [His birthday was July 12.]

317

1851] THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT

tion of my spirit’s life ? Shall I turn my spring to sum¬
mer? May I not sacrifice a hasty and petty complete¬
ness here to entireness there ? If my curve is large, why
bend it to a smaller circle ? My spirit’s unfolding ob¬
serves not the pace of nature. The society which I was
made for is not here. Shall I, then, substitute for the
anticipation of that this poor reality ? I would [rather]
have the unmixed expectation of that than this reality.
If life is a waiting, so be it. I will not be shipwrecked
on a vain reality. What were any reality which I can
substitute? Shall I with pains erect a heaven of blue
glass over myself, though when it is done I shall be
sure to gaze still on the true ethereal heaven far above,
as if the former were not, — that still distant sky o’er-
arching that blue expressive eye of heaven ? 1 I am
enamored of the blue-eyed arch of heaven.

1 did not make this demand for a more thorough
sympathy. This is not my idiosyncrasy or disease.
He that made the demand will answer the demand.

My blood flows as slowly as the waves of my native
Musketaquid; yet they reach the ocean sooner, per¬
chance, than those of the Nashua.

Already the goldenrod is budded, but I can make no
haste for that.

2 p. m. — The weather is warm and dry, and many
leaves curl. There is a threatening cloud in the south¬
west. The farmers dare not spread their hay. It re¬
mains cocked in the fields. As you walk in the woods
nowadays, the flies striking against your hat sound

1 [ Walden , pp. 358, 359; Riv. 502.]

318

JOURNAL

[July 19

like rain-drops. The stump or root fences on the Cor¬
ner road remind me of fossil remains of mastodons,
etc., exhumed and bleached in sun and rain. To-day
I met with the first orange flower of autumn. What
means this doubly torrid, this Bengal, tint? Yellow
took sun enough, but this is the fruit of a dog-day sun.
The year has but just produced it. Here is the Canada
thistle in bloom, visited by butterflies and bees. The
butterflies have swarmed within these few days, espe¬
cially about the milkweeds. The swamp-pink still fills
the air with its perfume in swamps and by the cause¬
ways, though it is far gone. The wild rose still scatters
its petals over the leaves of neighboring plants. The
wild morning-glory or bindweed, with its delicate red
and white blossoms. I remember it ever as a goblet full
of purest morning air and sparkling with dew, showing
the dew-point, winding round itself for want of other
support. It grows by the Hubbard Bridge causeway,
near the angelica. The cherry-birds are making their
seringo sound as they flit past. They soon find out the
locality of the cherry trees. And beyond the bridge
there is a goldenrod partially blossomed. Yesterday it
was spring, and to-morrow it will be autumn. Where
is the summer then? First came the St. John’s-wort
and now the goldenrod to admonish us. I hear, too,
a cricket amid these stones under the blackberry vines,
singing as in the fall. Ripe blackberries are multiply¬
ing. I see the red-spotted berries of the small Solomon Js-
seal in my path. I notice, in the decayed end of an oak
post, that the silver grain is not decayed, but remains
sound in thin flakes, alternating with the decayed por-

319

1851] A PROPOSED OCCUPATION

tions and giving the whole a honeycombed look. Such
an object supramundane, as even a swallow may de¬
scend to light on, a dry mullein stalk for instance. I
see that hens, too, follow the cows feeding near the
house, like the cow troopial, and for the same object.
They cannot so well scare up insects for themselves.
This is the dog the cowbird uses to start up its insect
game. I see yellow butterflies in pairs, pursuing each
other a rod or two into the air, and now, as he had
bethought himself of the danger of being devoured by
a passing bird, he descends with a zigzag flight to the
earth, and the other follows. The black huckleberries
are now so thick among the green ones that they no
longer incur suspicion of being worm-eaten.

When formerly I was looking about to see what I
could do for a living, some sad experience in conform¬
ing to the wishes of friends being fresh in my mind to
tax my ingenuity, I thought often and seriously of pick¬
ing huckleberries; that surely I could do, and its small
profits might suffice, so little capital it required, so little
distraction from my wonted thoughts, I foolishly thought.
While my acquaintances went unhesitatingly into trade
or the professions, I thought of this occupation as most
like theirs; ranging the hills all summer to pick the
berries which came in my way, which I might carelessly
dispose of ; so to keep the flocks of King Admetus. My
greatest skill has been to want but little. I also dreamed
that I might gather the wild herbs, or carry evergreens
to such villagers as loved to be reminded of the woods
and so find my living got. But I have since learned that
trade curses everything it handles; and though you

320

JOURNAL

[July 19

trade in messages from heaven, the whole curse of trade
attaches to the business.1

The wind rises more and more. The river and the
pond are blacker than the threatening cloud in the south.
The thunder mutters in the distance. The surface of
the water is slightly rippled. Where the pads grow is
a light green border. The woods roar. Small white
clouds are hurrying across the dark-blue ground of the
storm, which rests on all the woods of the south horizon.
But still no rain now for some hours, as if the clouds
were dissipated as fast as they reached this atmosphere.

The barberry’s fruit hangs yellowish-green. What
pretty covers the thick bush makes, so large and wide and
drooping ! The Fringilla juncorujn sings still, in spite of
the coming tempest, which, perchance, only threatens.

The woodchuck is a good native of the soil. The dis¬
tant hillside and the grain-fields and pastures are spotted
yellow or white with his recent burrows, and the small
mounds remain for many years. Here where the clover
has lately been cut, see what a yellow mound is brought
to light!

Heavily hangs the common yellow lily ( Lilium
Canadense) in the meadows. In the thick alder copses
by the causeway-side I find the Lysimachia hybrida.
Here is the Lactuca sanguinea with its runcinate leaves,
tall stem, and pale-crimson ray. And that green¬
stemmed one higher than my head, resembling the
last in its leaves, is perchance the “tall lettuce,” or

fine white-flowered mea-
leaf be a thalictrum ?

1 [Walden , p. 77; Riv. 110, 111.]

THE RIVER’S CROP

321

1851]

July 20. Sunday morning . A thunder-shower in the
night. Thunder near at hand, though louder, is a
more trivial and earthly sound than at a distance; lik¬
ened to sounds of men. The clap which waked me last
night was as if some one was moving lumber in an upper
apartment, some vast hollow hall, tumbling it down
and dragging it over the floor; and ever and anon the
lightning filled the damp air with light, like some vast
glow-worm in the fields of ether opening its wings.

The river, too, steadily yields its crop. In louring days
it is remarkable how many villagers resort to it. It is
of more worth than many gardens. I meet one, late in
the afternoon, going to the river with his basket on his
arm and his pole in hand, not ambitious to catch pick¬
erel this time, but he thinks he may perhaps get a mess
of small fish. These [szc] kind of values are real and
important, though but little appreciated, and he is not
a wise legislator who underrates them and allows the
bridges to be built low so as to prevent the passage
of small boats. The town is but little conscious how
much interest it has in the river, and might vote it away
any day thoughtlessly. There is always to be seen either
some unshaven wading man, an old mower of the river
meadows, familiar with water, vibrating his long pole
over the lagoons of the off-shore pads, or else some soli¬
tary fisher, in a boat behind the willows, like a mote
in the sunbeams reflecting the light; and who can tell
how many a mess of river fish is daily cooked in the
town ? They are an important article of food to many
a poor family.

Some are poets, some are not, — as in relation to

322 JOURNAL [July 20

getting a living, so to getting a wife. As their ideals of
life vary, so do their ideals of love.

4 p. m. Annursnack. — The under sides of the leaves,
exposed by the breeze, give a light bluish tinge to the
woods as I look down on them. Looking at the woods
west of this hill, there is a grateful dark shade under
their eastern sides, where they meet the meadows, their
cool night side, — a triangular segment of night, to
which the sun has set. The mountains look like waves
on a blue ocean tossed up by a stiff gale. The Rhexia
Virginica is in bloom.

July 21. 8 a. m. — The forenoon is fuller of light. The
butterflies on the flowers look like other and frequently
larger flowers themselves. Now I yearn for one of those
old, meandering, dry, uninhabited roads, which lead
away from towns, which lead us away from tempta¬
tion, which conduct to the outside of earth, over its
uppermost crust; where you may forget in what coun¬
try you are travelling; where no farmer can complain
that you are treading down his grass, no gentleman
who has recently constructed a seat in the country
that you are trespassing; on which you can go off at
half-cock and wave adieu to the village; along which
you may travel like a pilgrim, going nowhither; where
travellers are not too often to be met; where my spirit
is free; where the walls and fences are not cared for;
where your head is more in heaven than your feet are
on earth; which have long reaches where you can see
the approaching traveller half a mile off and be pre-

1851] AN OLD UNTRAVELLED ROAD 323

pared for him; not so luxuriant a soil as to attract men;
some root and stump fences which do not need atten¬
tion; where travellers have no occasion to stop, but
pass along and leave you to your thoughts; where it
makes no odds which way you face, whether you are
going or coming, whether it is morning or evening,
mid-noon or midnight; where earth is cheap enough
by being public; where you can walk and think with
least obstruction, there being nothing to measure pro¬
gress by; where you can pace when your breast is full,
and cherish your moodiness; where you are not in
false relations with men, are not dining nor conversing
with them; by which you may go to the uttermost
parts of the earth. It is wide enough, wide as the thoughts
it allows to visit you. Sometimes it is some particular
half-dozen rods which I wish to find myself pacing
over, as where certain airs blow; then my life will come
to me, methinks; like a hunter I walk in wait for it.
When I am against this bare promontory of a huckle¬
berry hill, then forsooth my thoughts will expand. Is
it some influence, as a vapor which exhales from the
ground, or something in the gales which blow there,
or in all things there brought together agreeably to
my spirit ? The walls must not be too high, imprison¬
ing me, but low, with numerous gaps. The trees must
not be too numerous, nor the hills too near, bounding
the view, nor the soil too rich, attracting the attention
to the earth. It must simply be the way and the life, —
a way that was never known to be repaired, nor to need
repair, within the memory of the oldest inhabitant. I
cannot walk habitually in those ways that are liable to

324

JOURNAL

[July 21

be mended; for sure it was the devil only that wore
them. Never by the heel of thinkers (of thought) were
they worn; the zephyrs could repair that damage. The
saunterer wears out no road, even though he travel on
it, and therefore should pay no highway, or rather low
way, tax. He may be taxed to construct a higher way
than men travel. A way which no geese defile, nor
hiss along it, but only sometimes their wild brethren,
fly far overhead; which the kingbird and the swallow
twitter over, and the song sparrow sings on its rails;
where the small red butterfly is at home on the yarrow,
and no boys threaten it with imprisoning hat. There
I can walk and stalk and pace and plod. Which no¬
body but Jonas Potter travels beside me; where no
cow but his is tempted to linger for the herbage by its
side; where the guide-board is fallen, and now the
hand points to heaven significantly, — to a Sudbury
and Marlborough in the skies. That’s a road I can
travel, that the particular Sudbury I am bound for,
six miles an hour, or two, as you please; and few there
be that enter thereon. There I can walk, and recover
the lost child that I am without any ringing of a bell;
where there was nothing ever discovered to detain a
traveller, but all went through about their business;
where I never passed the time of day with any, — in¬
different to me were the arbitrary divisions of time;
where Tullus Hostilius might have disappeared, — at
any rate has never been seen. The road to the Comer!
the ninety and nine acres that you go through to get
there! I would rather see it again, though I saw it this
morning, than Gray’s churchyard. The road whence

1851] AN OLD UNTRAVELLED ROAD 325

you may hear a stake-driver, a whip-poor-will, a quail
in a midsummer day, a — yes, a quail comes nearest
to the gum-c1 bird heard there; where it would not be
sport for a sportsman to go. And the mayweed looks
up in my face, — not there; the pale lobelia, the Canada
snapdragon, rather. A little hardhack and meadow¬
sweet peep over the fence, — nothing more serious to
obstruct the view, — and thimble-berries are the food
of thought, before the drought, along by the walls.2

It is they who go to Brighton and to market that
wear out the roads, and they should pay all the tax.
The deliberate pace of a thinker never made a road
the worse for travelling on.

There I have freedom in my thought, and in my
soul am free. Excepting the omnipresent butcher with
his calf-cart, followed by a distracted and anxious
cow.8

Be it known that in Concord, where the first forcible
resistance to British aggression was made in the year
1775, they chop up the young calves and give them
to the hens to make them lay, it being considered the
cheapest and most profitable food for them, and they
sell the milk to Boston.

On the promenade deck of the world, an outside
passenger. The inattentive, ever strange baker, whom
no weather detains, that does not bake his bread in
this hemisphere, — and therefore it is dry before it

1 [So Charming (p. 128), who calls it “one of Thoreau’s names for
some bird, so named by the farmers.” The word as written is far
from clear.]

9 Vide p. [373].

8 [Charming, pp. 126-128.]

326

JOURNAL

[July 21

gets here. Ah! there is a road where you might ad¬
vertise to fly, and make no preparations till the time
comes; where your wings will sprout if anywhere,
where your feet are not confined to earth. An airy head
makes light walking.

Where I am not confined and balked by the sight of
distant farmhouses which I have not gone past. In
roads the obstructions are not under my feet, — I care
not for rough ground or wet even, — but they are in my
vision and in the thoughts or associations which I am
compelled to entertain. I must be fancy-free; I must
feel that, wet or dry, high or low, it is the genuine sur¬
face of the planet, and not a little chip-dirt or a com¬
post-heap, or made land or redeemed. Where I can sit
by the wall-side and not be peered at by any old ladies
going a-shopping, not have to bow to one whom I may
have seen in my youth, — at least, not more than once.
I am engaged and cannot be polite. Did you ever hear
of such a thing as a man sitting in the road, and then
have four eyes levelled at you ? Have we any more
right sometimes to look at one than to point a revolver at
him; it might go off; and so, perchance, we might see
him, — though there is not so much danger of that , —
which would be equally fatal, if it should ever happen,
though perhaps it never has.

A thinker’s weight is in his thought, not in his tread ;
when he thinks freely, his body weighs nothing. He
cannot tread down your grass, farmers.1

I thought to walk this forenoon instead of this after¬
noon, for I have not been in the fields and woods much
1 [Channing, pp. 128, 129.]

A BLACK VEIL

327

1851]

of late except when surveying, but the least affair of
that kind is as if you had [a] black veil drawn over your
face which shut out nature, as that eccentric and melan¬
choly minister whom I have heard of.1 It may be the
fairest day in all the year and you shall not know it.
One little chore to do, one little commission to fulfill, one
message to carry, would spoil heaven itself. Talk about a
lover being engaged ! He is the only man in all the world
who is free. And all you get is your dollars. To go
forth before the heat is intolerable, and see what is the
difference between forenoon and afternoon. It seems
there is a little more coolness in the air; there is still
some dew, even on this short grass in the shade of the
walls and woods ; and a feeling of vigor the walker has.
There are few sounds but the slight twittering of swal¬
lows, and the springy note of the sparrow in the grass
or trees, and a lark in the meadow (now at 8 a. m.),
and the cricket under all to ally the hour to night. Day
is, in fact, about as still as night. Draw the veil of night
over this landscape, and these sounds would not disturb
nor be inconsistent for their loudness with the night.
It is a difference of white and black. Nature is in a
white sleep. It threatens to be a hot day, and the hay¬
makers are whetting their scythes in the fields, where
they have been out since 4 o’clock. When I have seen
them in the twilight commencing their labors, I have
been impressed as if it were last night. There is some¬
thing ghastly about such very early labor. I cannot
detect the whole and characteristic difference between

1 [See Hawthorne’s story 44 The Minister’s Black Veil” and foot¬
note to the title, Twice-Told Tales, Riverside Edition, p. 52.]

328

JOURNAL

[July 21

this and afternoon, though it is positive and decided
enough, as my instincts know. By 2 o’clock it will be
warmer and hazier, obscuring the mountains, and the
leaves will curl, and the dust will rise more readily.
Every herb is fresher now, has recovered from yester¬
day’s drought. The cooler air of night still lingers in the
fields, as by night the warm air of day. The noon is
perchance the time to stay in the house.

There is no glory so bright but the veil of business
can hide it effectually. With most men life is postponed
to some trivial business, and so therefore is heaven.
Men think foolishly they may abuse and misspend life
as they please and when they get to heaven turn over a
new leaf.

I see the track of a bare human foot in the dusty road,
the toes and muscles all faithfully imprinted. Such a
sight is so rare that it affects me with surprise, as the
footprint on the shore of Juan Fernandez did Crusoe. It
is equally rare here. I am affected as if some Indian or
South-Sea-Islander had been along, some man who had
a foot. I am slow to be convinced that any of my neigh¬
bors — the judge on the bench, the parson in the pulpit
— might have made that or something like it, however
irregular. It is pleasant as it is to see the tracks of cows
and deer and birds. I am brought so much nearer to
the tracker — when again I think of the sole of my own
foot — than when I behold that of his shoe merely, or
am introduced to him and converse with him in the
usual way. I am disposed to say to the judge whom I
meet, “ Make tracks.”

Men are very generally spoiled by being so civil and

THE GENTLEMAN

1851]

well-disposed. You can have no profitable conversation
with them, they are so conciliatory, determined to
agree with you. They exhibit such long-suffering and
kindness in a short interview. I would meet with some
provoking strangeness, so that we may be guest and
host and refresh one another. It is possible for a man
wholly to disappear and be merged in his manners. The
thousand and one gentlemen whom I meet, I meet
despairingly and but to part from them, for I am not
cheered by the hope of any rudeness from them. A cross
man, a coarse man, an eccentric man, a silent, a man
who does not drill well, — of him there is some hope.
Your gentlemen, they are all alike. They utter their
opinions as if it was not a man that uttered them. It
is “just as you please;” they are indifferent to every¬
thing. They will talk with you for nothing. The inter¬
esting man will rather avoid [you], and it is a rare chance
if you get so far as talk with him. The laborers whom
I know, the loafers, fishers, and hunters, I can spin
yarns with profitably, for it is hands off; they are they
and I am I still; they do not come to me and quarter
themselves on me for a day or an hour to be treated
politely, they do not cast themselves on me for enter¬
tainment, they do not approach me with a flag of truce.
They do not go out of themselves to meet me. I am
never electrified by my gentleman; he is not an electric
eel, but one of the common kind that slip through your
hands, however hard you clutch them, and leave them
covered with slime. He is a man, every inch of him;
is worth a groom.

To eat berries on the dry pastures of Conantum, as if

330 JOURNAL [July 21

they were the food of thought, dry as itself! Berries
are now thick enough to pick.

9 a. m. On Conantum. — A quarter of a mile is distance
enough to make the atmosphere look blue now. This is
never the case in spring or early summer. It was fit
that I should see an indigo-bird here, concerned about its
young, a perfect embodiment of the darkest blue that
ever fills the valleys at this season. The meadow-grass
reflecting the light has a bluish cast also.

Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth; i. e.,
lay up a store of natural influences. Sing while you may,
before the evil days come. He that hath ears, let him
hear. See, hear, smell, taste, etc., while these senses
are fresh and pure.

There is always a kind of fine seolian harp music to be
heard in the air. I hear now, as it were, the mellow
sound of distant horns in the hollow mansions of the
upper air, a sound to make all men divinely insane
that hear it, far away overhead, subsiding into my ear.
To ears that are expanded what a harp this world is!
The occupied ear thinks that beyond the cricket no sound
can be heard, but there is an immortal melody that may
be heard morning, noon, and night, by ears that can
attend, and from time to time this man or that hears it,
having ears that were made for music. To hear this
the hardhack and the meadow-sweet aspire. They are
thus beautifully painted, because they are tinged in the
lower stratum of that melody.

I eat these berries as simply and naturally as thoughts
come to my mind.

WILD PIGEONS

331

1851]

Never yet did I chance to sit in a house, except my
own house in the woods, and hear a wood thrush sing.
Would it not be well to sit in such a chamber within
sound of the finest songster of the grove ?

The quail, invisible, whistles, and who attends ?

10 a. m. — The white lily has opened. How could it
stand these heats ? It has pantingly opened, and now lies
stretched out by its too long stem on the surface of the
shrunken river. The air grows more and more blue,
making pretty effects when one wood is seen from an¬
other through a little interval. Some pigeons here are
resting in the thickest of the white pines during the
heat of the day, migrating, no doubt. They are unwill¬
ing to move for me. Flies buzz and rain about my hat,
and the dead twigs and leaves of the white pine, which
the choppers have left here, exhale a dry and almost
sickening scent. A cuckoo chuckles, half throttled, on
a neighboring tree, and now, flying into the pine, scares
out a pigeon, which flies with its handsome tail spread,
dashes this side and that between the trees helplessly,
like a ship carrying too much sail in midst of a small
creek, some great amiral; having no room to manoeuvre,
— a fluttering flight.

The mountains can scarcely be seen for the blue
haze, — only Wachusett and the near ones. The thorny
apple bush on Conantum has lately sent up branches
from its top, resolved to become a tree; and these
spreading (and bearing fruit), the whole has the form
of a vast hour-glass. The lower part being the most
dense by far, you would say the sand had run out.1

1 [Excursions, p. 305; Riv. 375.]

382

JOURNAL

[July 21

I now return through Conant’s leafy woods by the
spring, whose floor is sprinkled with sunlight, — low
trees which yet effectually shade you.

The dusty mayweed now blooms by the roadside, one
of the humblest flowers. The rough hawkweed, too,
by the damp roadside, resembling in its flower the
autumnal dandelion. That was probably the Verbena
hastata , or common blue vervain, which I found the
other day by Walden Pond.

The Antirrhinum Canadense , Canada snapdragon, in
the Comer road; and the ragged orchis on Conantum.

8.30 p. m. — The streets of the village are much more
interesting to me at this hour of a summer evening than
by day. Neighbors, and also farmers, come a-shopping
after their day’s haying, are chatting in the streets, and
I hear the sound of many musical instruments and of
singing from various houses. For a short hour or two
the inhabitants are sensibly employed. The evening is
devoted to poetry, such as the villagers can appreciate.

How rare to meet with a farmer who is a man of
sentiment! Yet there was one, Gen. Joshua Buttrick,
who died the other day, who is said to have lived in his
sentiments. He used to say that the smell of burning
powder excited him.

It is said that Mirabeau took to highway robbery
“to ascertain what degree of resolution was necessary
in order to place one’s self in formal opposition to the
most sacred laws of society.” He declared that “a
soldier who fights in the ranks does not require half so
much courage as a foot-pad.” “ Honor and religion have

1851] MIRABEAU AS A HIGHWAYMAN 333

never stood in the way of a well-considered and a firm
resolve.1 Tell me, Du Saillant, when you lead your
regiment into the heat of battle, to conquer a province
to which he whom you call your master has no right
whatever, do you consider that you are performing a
better action than mine, in stopping your friend on the
king’s highway, and demanding his purse?”

“ I obey without reasoning,” replied the count.

“And I reason without obeying, when obedience
appears to me to be contrary to reason,” rejoined
Mirabeau.2

This was good and manly, as the world goes; and
yet it was desperate. A saner man would have found
opportunities enough to put himself in formal opposi¬
tion to the most sacred laws of society, and so test
his resolution, in the natural course of events, without
violating the laws of his own nature. It is not for a
man to put himself in such an attitude to society, but
to maintain himself in whatever attitude he finds him¬
self through obedience to the laws of his being, which
will never be one of opposition to a just government.3
Cut the leather only where the shoe pinches. Let us not
have a rabid virtue that will be revenged on society, —
that falls on it, not like the morning dew, but like the
fervid noonday sun, to wither it.

July 22. The season of morning fogs has arrived. I
think it is connected with dog-days. Perhaps it is owing

1 [Walden , p. 355; Riv. 497.]

2 Harper's New Monthly , vol. i, p. 648, from Chambers' Edin¬
burgh Journal.

* I Walden, p. 355; Riv. 497.]

334

JOURNAL

[July 22

to the greater contrast between the night and the day,
the nights being nearly as cold, while the days are
warmer? Before I rise from my couch, I see the am¬
brosial fog stretched over the river, draping the trees.
It is the summer’s vapor bath. What purity in the color!
It is almost musical; it is positively fragrant. How
faery-like it has visited our fields. I am struck by its
firm outlines, as distinct as a pillow’s edge, about the
height of my house. A great crescent over the course of
the river from southwest to northeast. Already, 5.30 a. m.,
some parts of the river are bare. It goes off in a body
down the river, before this air, and does not rise into
the heavens. It retreats, and I do not see how it is dis¬
sipated. This slight, thin vapor which is left to curl
over the surface of the still, dark water, still as glass,
seems not [to] be the same thing, — of a different
quality. I hear the cockerels crow through it, and the
rich crow of young roosters, that sound indicative of
the bravest, rudest health, hoarse without cold, hoarse
with rude health. That crow is all-nature-compelling;
famine and pestilence flee before it. These are our
fairest days, which are born in a fog.

I saw the tall lettuce yesterday ( Lactuca elongata),
whose top or main shoot had been broken off, and it
had put up various stems, with entire and lanceolate,
not rundnate leaves as usual, thus making what some
botanists have called a variety, P. linearis. So I have
met with some geniuses who, having met with some such
acddent maiming them, have been developed in some
such monstrous and partial, though original, way. They
were original in being less than themselves.

MAIMED GENIUSES

335

1851]

Yes, your leaf is peculiar, and some would make of
you a distinct variety, but to me you appear like the
puny result of an accident and misfortune, for you have
lost your main shoot, and the leaves which would have
grown rundnate are small and lanceolate.

The last Sunday afternoon I smelled the clear pork
frying for a farmer’s supper thirty rods off (what a
Sunday supper!), the windows being open, and could
imagine the clear tea without milk which usually accom¬
panies it.

Now the cat-o’-nine-tails are seen in the impenetrable
meadows, and the tall green rush is perfecting its tufts.
The spotted polygonum (P. Persicaria) by the road¬
side.

I scare up a woodcock from some moist place at
midday.

The pewee and kingbird are killing bees, perched on
a post or a dead twig.

I bathe me in the river. I lie down where it is shallow,
amid the weeds over its sandy bottom; but it seems
shrunken and parched; I find it difficult to get wet
through. I would fain be the channel of a mountain
brook. I bathe, and in a few hours I bathe again, not
remembering that I was wetted before. When I come
to the river, I take off my clothes and carry them over,
then bathe and wash off the mud and continue my
walk. I would fain take rivers in my walks endwise.

There was a singular charm for me in those French
names, — more than in the things themselves. The
names of Italian and Grecian cities, villages, and
natural features are not more poetic to me than the

336

JOURNAL

[July 22

names of those humble Canadian villages. To be told
by a habitant, when I asked the name of a village in
sight, that is St. Fereol or St. Anne’s! But I was quite
taken off my feet when, running back to inquire what
river we were crossing, and thinking for a long time
he said la riviere d’ ocean, it flashed upon me at last
that it was La Riviere du Chien.1

There was so much grace and sentiment and refine¬
ment in the names, how could they be coarse who took
them so often on their lips, — St. Anne’s, St. Joseph’s;
the holy Anne’s, the holy Joseph’s! Next to the Indian,
the French missionary and voyageur and Catholic
habitant have named the natural features of the land.
The prairie , the voyageur 1 Or does every man think
his neighbor is the richer and more fortunate man, his
neighbor’s fields the richest ?

It needed only a little outlandishness in the names,
a little foreign accent, a few more vowels in the words,
to make me locate all my ideals at once. How prepared
we are for another world than this! We are no sooner
over the line of the States than we expect to see men
leading poetic lives, — nothing so natural, that is the
presumption. The names of the mountains, and the
streams, and the villages reel with the intoxication of
poetry — Longueuil, Chambly, Barthillon (?), Mon¬
thly ( ?).2

Where there were books only, to find realities. Of
course we assign to the place the idea which the written

1 [Excursions, pp. 56, 57; Riv. 69, 70.]

3 [Excursions, p. 57; Riv. 71.]

337

1851] WALKING AND WRITING

history or poem suggested. Quebec, of course, is never
seen for what it simply is to practical eyes, but as the
local habitation of those thoughts and visions which
we have derived from reading of Wolfe and Montcalm,
Montgomery and Arnold. It is hard to make me attend
to the geology of Cape Diamond or the botany of the
Plains of Abraham.1 How glad we are to find that there
is another race of men ! for they may be more successful
and fortunate than we.

Canada is not a place for railroads to terminate in,
or for criminals to run to.2

July 23. Wednesday. I remember the last moon,
shining through a creamy atmosphere, with a tear in
the eye of Nature and her tresses dishevelled and
drooping, sliding up the sky, the glistening air, the
leaves shining with dew, pulsating upward; an atmos¬
phere unworn, unprophaned by day. What self-healing
in Nature ! — swept by the dews.

For some weeks past the roadsides and the dry and
trivial fields have been covered with the field trefoil
(Trifolium arvense), now in bloom.

8 a. m. — A comfortable breeze blowing. Methinks I
can write better in the afternoon, for the novelty of
it, if I should go abroad this morning. My genius
makes distinctions which my understanding cannot,
and which my senses do not report. If I should reverse
the usual, — go forth and saunter in the fields all the

1 [Excursions, p. 88; Riv. 109, 110.]

* [. Excursions , p. 57; Riv. 71.]

338

JOURNAL

[July 23

forenoon, then sit down in my chamber in the afternoon,
which it is so unusual for me to do, — it would be like a
new season to me, and the novelty of it [would] inspire
me. The wind has fairly blown me outdoors ; the elements
were so lively and active, and I so sympathized with
them, that I could not sit while the wind went by. And
I am reminded that we should especially improve the
summer to live out-of-doors. When we may so easily, it
behooves us to break up this custom of sitting in the
house, for it is but a custom, and I am not sure that it
has the sanction of common sense. A man no sooner
gets up than he sits down again. Fowls leave their
perch in the morning, and beasts their lairs, unless they
are such as go abroad only by night. The cockerel
does not take up a new perch in the barn , and he is the
embodiment of health and common sense. Is the lit¬
erary man to live always or chiefly sitting in a chamber
through which nature enters by a window only ? What
is the use of the summer?

You must walk so gently as to hear the finest sounds,
the faculties being in repose. Your mind must not
perspire. True, out of doors my thought is commonly
drowned, as it were, and shrunken, pressed down by
stupendous piles of light ethereal influences, for the
pressure of the atmosphere is still fifteen pounds to a
square inch. I can do little more than preserve the
equilibrium and resist the pressure of the atmosphere.
I can only nod like the rye-heads in the breeze. I ex¬
pand more surely in my chamber, as far as expression
goes, as if that pressure were taken off; but here out¬
doors is the place to store up influences.

SWALLOWS

339

1851]

The swallow’s twitter is the sound of the lapsing
waves of the air, or when they break and burst, as his
wings represent the ripple. He has more air in his bones
than other birds; his feet are defective. The fish of the
air. His note is the voice of the air. As fishes may hear
the sound of waves lapsing on the surface and see the
outlines of the ripples, so we hear the note and see
the flight of swallows.

The influences which make for one walk more than
another, and one day more than another, are much
more ethereal than terrestrial. It is the quality of the
air much more than the quality of the ground that con¬
cerns the walker, — cheers or depresses him. What
he may find in the air, not what he may find on the
ground.

On such a road (the Corner) I walk securely, seeing
far and wide on both sides, as if I were flanked by fight
infantry on the hills, to rout the provincials, as the
British marched into Concord, while my grenadier
thoughts keep the main road. That is, my light-armed
and wandering thoughts scour the neighboring fields,
and so I know if the coast is clear. With what a breadth
of van I advance! I am not bounded by the walls. I
think more than the road full. (Going southwesterly.)

While I am abroad, the ovipositors plant their seeds
in me; I am fly-blown with thought, and go home to
hatch and brood over them.

I was too discursive and rambling in my thought for
the chamber, and must go where the wind blows on me
walking.

A little brook crossing the road (the Comer road).

340

JOURNAL

[July 23

a few inches’ depth of transparent water rippling over
yellow sand and pebbles, the pure blood of nature.
How miraculously crystal-like, how exquisite, fine, and
subtle, and liquid this element, which an imperceptible
inclination in the channel causes to flow thus surely
and swiftly! How obedient to its instinct, to the faintest
suggestion of the hills! If inclined but a hair’s breadth,
it is in a torrent haste to obey. And all the revolutions
of the planet — nature is so exquisitely adjusted —
and the attraction of the stars do not disturb this equi¬
poise, but the rills still flow the same way, and the water
levels are not disturbed.

We are not so much like debauchees as in the after¬
noon.

The mind is subject to moods, as the shadows of
clouds pass over the earth. Pay not too much heed to
them. Let not the traveller stop for them. They con¬
sist with the fairest weather. By the mood of my mind,
I suddenly felt dissuaded from continuing my walk,
but I observed at the same instant that the shadow of
a cloud was passing over [the] spot on which I stood,
though it was of small extent, which, if it had no
connection with my mood, at any rate suggested how
transient and little to be regarded that mood was. I
kept on, and in a moment the sun shone on my walk
within and without.

The button-bush in blossom. The tobacco-pipe in
damp woods. Certain localities only a few rods square
in the fields and on the hills, sometimes the other side
of a wall, attract me as if they had been the scene of
pleasure in another state of existence.

DROUGHT

341

1851]

But this habit of close observation, — in Humboldt,
Darwin, and others. Is it to be kept up long, this sci¬
ence? Do not tread on the heels of your experience.
Be impressed without making a minute of it. Poetry
puts an interval between the impression and the ex¬
pression, — waits till the seed germinates naturally.

July 24. 5 A. m. — The street and fields betray the
drought and look more parched than at noon; they
look as I feel, — languid and thin and feeling my nerves.
The potatoes and the elms and the herbage by the road¬
side, though there is a slight dew, seem to rise out of an
arid and thirsty soil into the atmosphere of a furnace
slightly cooled down. The leaves of the elms are yellow.
Ah! now I see what the noon was and what it may be
again. The effects of drought are never more apparent
than at dawn. Nature is like a hen panting with open
mouth, in the grass, as the morning after a debauch.

July 25. Friday. Started for Clark’s Island at
7 A. M.

At 9 A. m. took the Hingham boat and was landed
at Hull. There was a pleasure party on board, appar¬
ently boys and girls belonging to the South End, going
to Hingham. There was a large proportion of ill-
dressed and ill-mannered boys of Irish extraction. A sad
sight to behold ! Little boys of twelve years, prematurely
old, sucking cigars! I felt that if I were their mothers
I should whip them and send them to bed. Such chil¬
dren should be dealt with as for stealing or impurity.
The opening of this valve for the safety of the city!

342

JOURNAL

[July 25

Oh, what a wretched resource ! What right have parents
to beget, to bring up, and attempt to educate children in
a city? I thought of infanticide among the Orientals
with complacency. I seemed to hear infant voices lisp,
“Give us a fair chance, parents.” There is no such
squalidness in the country. You would have said that
they must all have come from the house of correction
and the farm-school, but such a company do the boys
in Boston streets make. The birds have more care for
their young, — where they place their nests. What
are a city’s charities? She cannot be charitable any
more than the old philosopher could move the earth,
unless she has a resting-place without herself. A true
culture is more possible to the savage than to the boy
of average intellect, bom of average parents, in a great
city. I believe that they perish miserably. How can
they be kept clean, physically or morally? It is folly
to attempt to educate children within a city; the first
step must be to remove them out of it. It seemed a
groping and helpless philanthropy that I heard of.

I heard a boy telling the story of Nix’s Mate to some
girls, as we passed that spot, how “he said, ‘If I am
guilty, this island will remain; but if I am innocent, it
will be washed away,’ and now it is all washed away.” 1
This was a simple and strong expression of feeling
suitable to the occasion, by which he committed the
evidence of his innocence to the dumb isle, such as the
boy could appreciate, a proper sailor’s legend; and I
was reminded that it is the illiterate and unimaginative
class that seizes on and transmits the legends in which
1 [Cape Codt p. 267; Riv. 323.]

HULL

343

1851]

the more cultivated delight. No fastidious poet dwell¬
ing in Boston had tampered with it, — no narrow poet,
but broad mankind, sailors from all ports sailing by.
They, sitting on the deck, were the literaiy academy
that sat upon its periods.

On the beach at Hull, and afterwards all along the
shore to Plymouth, I saw the datura, the variety (red-
stemmed), methinks, which some call Tatula instead
of Stramonium . I felt as if I was on the highway of the
world, at sight of this cosmopolite and veteran traveller.
It told of commerce and sailors’ yams without end. It
grows luxuriantly in sand and gravel. This Captain
Cook among plants, this Norseman or sea pirate,
viking or king of the bays, the beaches. It is not an in¬
nocent plant; it suggests commerce, with its attendant
vices.1

Saw a public house where I landed at Hull, made
like some barns which I have seen, of boards with a
cleat nailed over the cracks, without clapboards or
paint, evidently very simple and cheap, yet neat and
convenient as well as airy. It interested me, as the New
House at Long Island did not, as it brought the luxury
and comfort of the seashore within reach of the less
wealthy. It was such an exhibition of good sense as I
was not prepared for and do not remember to have seen
before. Ascended to the top of the hill, where is the old
French fort, with the well said to be ninety feet deep,
now covered.2 I saw some horses standing on the very
top of the ramparts, the highest part of Hull, where

1 [Cape Cod , p. 14; Riv. 15.]

2 [Cape Cod , p. 16; Riv. 17.]

344

JOURNAL

[July 25

there was hardly room to turn round, for the sake of the
breeze.1 It was excessively warm, and their instincts,
or their experience perchance, guided them as surely
to the summit as it did me. Here is the telegraph, nine
miles from Boston, whose State-House was just visible,
— movable signs on a pole with holes in them for the
passage of the wind. A man about the telegraph station
thought it the highest point in the harbor; said they
could tell the kind of vessel thirty miles off, the num¬
ber at masthead ten or twelve miles, name on hull six
or seven miles. They can see furthest in the fall. There
is a mist summer and winter, when the contrast between
the temperature of the sea and the air is greatest. I did
not see why this hill should not be fortified as well as
George’s Island, it being higher and also commanding
the main channel. However, an enemy could go by all
the forts in the dark, as Wolfe did at Quebec.2 They
are bungling contrivances.

• Here the bank is rapidly washing away. On every
side, in Boston Harbor, the evidences of the wasting
away of the islands are so obvious and striking that
they appear to be wasting faster than they are. You
will sometimes see a springing hill, showing by the
interrupted arch of its surface against the sky how
much space [it] must have occupied where there is
now water, as at Point Allerton, — what botanists

call premorse. ^ _ — n Hull looks as if it had

been two is- " lands, since connected

by a beach. I was struck by the gracefully curving

1 [Cape Codt p. 14; Riv. 15.]

3 [See Excursions , p. 79; Riv. 98.]

HULL

345

1851]

and fantastic shore of a small island (Hog Island)
inside of Hull,
be gently laps-
inhabitants
for device on
wave passing over them, with the datura growing on
their shores. The wrecks of isles fancifully arranged
into a new shore. To see the sea nibbling thus vora¬
ciously at the continents ! 1 A man at the telegraph told
me of a white oak pole a foot and a half in diameter,
forty feet high, and four feet or more in the rock at
Minot’s Ledge, with four guys, which stood only one
year. Stone piled up cob-fashion near same place
stood eight years.

Hull pretty good land, but bare of trees — only a
few cherries for the most part — and mostly unculti¬
vated, being owned by few. I heard the voices of men
shouting aboard a vessel half a mile from the shore,
which sounded as if they were in a barn in the country,
they being between the sails. It was not a sea sound.
It was a purely rural sound.3

Man needs to know but little more than a lobster in
order to catch him in his traps. Here were many lob¬
ster traps on the shore. The beds of dry seaweed or
eel-grass on the beach remind me of narrow shavings.
On the farther hill in Hull, I saw a field full of Canada
thistles close up to the fences on all sides, while be¬
yond them there was none. So much for these fields
having been subjected to different culture. So a differ-

1 [Cape Cod , p. 15; Riv. 15, 16.]

3 [Cape Cod, pp. 14, 15; Riv. 15.]

3>

where everything seemed to
ing into futurity, as if the
should bear a ripple \
their coat-of-arms, a ^

346

JOURNAL

[July 25

ent culture in the case of men brings in different weeds.
As are the virtues, so are the vices. Weeds come in with
the seeds, though perhaps much more in the manure.
Each kind of culture will introduce its own weeds.

I am bothered to walk with those who wish to keep
step with me. It is not necessary to keep step with your
companion, as some endeavor to do.

They told me at Hull that they burned the stem of
the kelp chiefly for potash. Chemistry is not a splitting
hairs when you have got half a dozen raw Irishmen
in the laboratory.

As I walked on the beach (Nantasket), panting with
thirst, a man pointed to a white spot on the side of a
distant hill (Strawberry Hill he called it) which rose
from the gravelly beach, and said that there was a pure
and cold and unfailing spring; and I could not help
admiring that in this town of Hull, of which I had
heard, but now for the first time saw, a single spring
should appear to me and should be of so much value.
I found Hull indeed, but there was also a spring on
that parched, unsheltered shore; the spring, though I
did not visit it, made the deepest impression on my
mind. Hull, the place of the spring and of the well.
This is what the traveller would remember. All that
he remembered of Rome was a spring on the Capito-
line Hill! 1

It is the most perfect seashore I have seen.2 The
rockweed falls over you like the tresses of mermaids,

1 [Cape Cod, pp. 15, 16; Riv. 16.]

* [Cape Cod, pp. 16, 17; Riv. 17, 18.]

347

1851] THE COHASSET SHORE

and you see the propriety of that epithet. You cannot
swim among these weeds and pull yourself up by them
without thinking of mermen and mermaids.

The barnacles on the rocks, which make a whitish
strip a few feet in width just above the weeds, remind
me of some vegetable growth which I have seen, — sur¬
rounded by a circle of calyx-like or petal-like shells
like some buds or seed-vessels. They, too, clinging to
the rocks like the weeds; lying along the seams of the
rock like buttons on a waistcoat.

I saw in Cohasset, separated from the sea only by a
narrow beach, a very large and handsome but shallow
lake, of at least four hundred acres, with five rocky islets
in it; which the sea had tossed over the beach in the
great storm in the spring, and, after the alewives had
passed into it, stopped up its outlet; and now the ale-
wives were dying by thousands, and the inhabitants
apprehended a pestilence as the water evaporated. The
water was very foul.1

The rockweed is considered the best for manure.
I saw them drying the Irish moss in quantities at Jeru¬
salem Village in Cohasset. It is said to be used for sizing
calico. Finding myself on the edge of a thunder-storm,
I stopped a few moments at the Rock House in Co¬
hasset, close to the shore. There was scarcely rain
enough to wet one, and no wind. I was therefore sur¬
prised to hear afterward, through a young man who
had just returned from Liverpool, that there was a
severe squall at quarantine ground, only seven or eight
miles northwest of me, such as he had not experienced
1 [Cape Cod, pp. 16, 17; Riv. 17-19.]

348

JOURNAL

[July 25

for three years, which sunk several boats and caused
some vessels to drag their anchors and come near going
ashore; proving that the gust which struck the water
there must have been of very limited breadth, for I
was or might have been overlooking the spot and felt
no wind. This rocky shore is called Pleasant Cove on
large maps; on the map of Cohasset alone, the name
seems to be confined to the cove where I first saw the
wreck of the St. John alone.1

Brush Island, opposite this, with a hut on it, not
permanently inhabited. It takes but little soil to tempt
men to inhabit such places. I saw here the American
holly {Ilex opaca ), which is not found further north
than Massachusetts, but south and west. The yellow
gerardia in the woods.

July 26. At Cohasset. — Called on Captain Snow,
who remembered hearing fishermen say that they
“fitted out at Thoreau’s;” remembered him. He had
commanded a packet between Boston or New York
and England. Spoke of the wave which he sometimes
met on the Atlantic coming against the wind, and which
indicated that the wind was blowing from an opposite
quarter at a distance, the undulation travelling faster
than the wind. They see Cape Cod loom here. Thought
the Bay between here and Cape Ann thirty fathoms
deep; between here and Cape Cod, siyty or seventy
fathoms. The “Annual of Scientific Discovery” for
1851 says, quoting a Mr. A. G. Findley, “Waves travel
very great distances, and are often raised by distant
1 [Cape Cod, , pp. 16, 18; Riv. 17, 19.]

THE COHASSET SHORE

349

1851]

hurricanes, having been felt simultaneously at St.
Helena and Ascension, though 600 miles apart, and
it is probable that ground swells often originate at
the Cape of Good Hope, 3000 miles distant.” Sailors
tell of tide-rips. Some are thought to be occasioned by
earthquakes.

The ocean at Cohasset did not look as if any were ever
shipwrecked in it. Not a vestige of a wreck left. It was
not grand and sublime now, but beautiful. The water
held in the little hollows of the rocks, on the receding
of the tide, is so crystal-pure that you cannot believe
it salt, but wish to drink it.1

The architect of a Minot Rock lighthouse might
profitably spend a day studying the worn rocks of
Cohasset shore, and learn the power of the waves, see
what kind of sand the sea is using to grind them down.

A fine delicate seaweed, which some properly enough
call sea-green. Saw here the staghorn, or velvet,
sumach ( Rhus typhina ), so called from form of young
branches, a size larger than the Rhus glabra common
with us. The Plantago maritima , or sea plantain, pro¬
perly named. I guessed its name before I knew what
it was called by botanists. The American sea-rocket
( Bunias edentula) I suppose it was that I saw, — the suc¬
culent plant with much cut leaves and small pinkish ( ?)
flowers.

July 27. Sunday. Walked from Cohasset to Duxbury
and sailed thence to Clark’s Island.

Visited the large tupelo tree ( Nyssa multiflora) in
1 [Cape Cod , pp. 17, 18; Riv. 18, 19.]

350

JOURNAL

[July 27

Scituate, whose rounded and open top, like some um¬
belliferous plant’s, I could see from Mr. Sewal’s, the
tree which George Emerson went twenty-five miles to
see, called sometimes snag-tree and swamp hornbeam,
also pepperidge and gum-tree. Hard to split. We have
it in Concord. Cardinal-flower in bloom. Scituate
meeting-houses on very high ground; the principal one
a landmark for sailors. Saw the buckthorn, which is
naturalized. One of Marshfield meeting-houses on the
height of land on my road. The countiy generally de¬
scends westerly toward the sources of Taunton River.

After taking the road by Webster’s beyond South
Marshfield, I walked a long way at noon, hot and
thirsty, before I could find a suitable place to sit and
eat my dinner, — a place where the shade and the
sward pleased me. At length I was obliged to put up
with a small shade close to the ruts, where the only
stream I had seen for some time crossed the road. Here,
also, numerous robins came to cool and wash them¬
selves and to drink. They stood in the water up to their
bellies, from time to time wetting their wings and tails
and also ducking their heads and sprinkling the water
over themselves ; then they sat on a fence near by to dry.
Then a goldfinch came and did the same, accompa¬
nied by the less brilliant female. These birds evidently
enjoyed their bath greatly, and it seemed indispensable
to them.

A neighbor of Webster’s told me that he had hard
on to sixteen hundred acres and was still buying more,
— a farm and factoiy within the year; cultivated a
hundred and fifty acres. I saw twelve acres of potatoes

351

1851] DANIEL WEBSTER’S FARM

together, the same of rye and wheat, and more me-
thinks of buckwheat. Fifteen or sixteen men, Irish
mostly, at ten dollars a month, doing the work of fifty,
with a Yankee overseer, long a resident of Marsh¬
field, named Wright. Would eat only the produce of his
farm during the few weeks he was at home, — brown
bread and butter and milk, — and sent out for a pig’s
cheek to eat with his greens. Ate only what grew on
his farm, but drank more than ran on his farm.

Took refuge from the rain at a Mr. Stetson’s in
Duxbury.

I forgot to say that I passed the Winslow House, now
belonging to Webster. This land was granted to the
family in 1637.

Sailed with tavern-keeper Winsor, who was going
out mackereling. Seven men, stripping up their clothes,
each bearing an armful of wood and one some new
potatoes, walked to the boats, then shoved them out a
dozen rods over the mud, then rowed half a mile to the
schooner of forty-three tons. They expected [to] be
gone about a week, and to begin to fish perhaps the
next morning. Fresh mackerel which they carried to
Boston. Had four dories, and commonly fished from
them. Else they fished on the starboard side aft, where
their lines hung ready with the old baits on, two to a
man. I had the experience of going on a mackerel
cruise.

They went aboard their schooner in a leisurely way
this Sunday evening, with a fair but very slight wind,
the sun now setting clear and shining on the vessel after
several thunder-showers. I was struck by the small

852

JOURNAL

[July 27

quantity of supplies which they appeared to take. We
climbed aboard, and there we were in a mackerel
schooner. The baits were not dry on the hooks. Winsor
cast overboard the foul juice of mackerels mixed with
rain-water which remained in his trough. There was
the mill in which to grind up the mackerel for bait, and
the trough to hold it, and the long-handled dipper to
cast it overboard with; and already in the harbor we
saw the surface rippled with schools of small mackerel.
They proceeded leisurely to weigh anchor, and then to
raise their two sails. There was one passenger, going
for health or amusement, who had been to California.
I had the experience of going a-mackereling, though I
was landed on an island before we got out of the harbor.
They expected to commence fishing the next morning.
It had been a very warm day with frequent thunder¬
showers. I had walked from Cohasset to Duxbury, and
had walked about the latter town to find a passage to
Clark’s Island, about three miles distant, but no boat
could stir, they said, at that state of the tide.1 The
tide was down, and boats were left high and dry. At
length I was directed to Winsor’s tavern, where per¬
chance I might find some mackerel-fishers, who were
going to sail that night to be ready for fishing in the
morning, and, as they would pass near the island, they
would take me. I found it so. Winsor himself was
going. I told him he was the very man for me; but I
must wait an hour. So I ate supper with them. Then
one after another of his crew was seen straggling to the

1 [Here he tells the story in a different form, showing an intention
of using it later.]

353

1851] A MACKEREL SCHOONER

shore, for the most part in high boots, — some made
of india-rubber, — some with their pants stripped up.
There were seven for this schooner, beside a passenger
and myself. The leisurely manner in which they pro¬
ceeded struck me. I had taken off my shoes and stock¬
ings and prepared to wade. Each of the seven took an
armful of pine wood and walked with it to the two boats,
which lay at high-water mark in the mud; then they
resolved that each should bring one more armful and
that would be enough. They had already got a barrel
of water and had some more in the schooner, also a
bucket of new potatoes. Then, dividing into two par¬
ties, we pulled and shoved the boats a dozen rods over
the mud and water till they floated, then rowed half a
mile or more over the shallow water to the little schooner
and climbed aboard. Many seals had their heads out.
We gathered about the helmsman and talked about the
compass, which was affected by the iron in the vessel,
etc., etc.1

Clark’s Island, Sunday night. — On Friday night
December 8th, O. S.,the Pilgrims, exploring in the shal¬
lop, landed on Clark’s Island (so called from the mas¬
ter’s mate of the May-Flower), where they spent three
nights and kept their first Sabbath. On Monday, or
the 11th, O. S., they landed on the Rock. This island
contains about eighty-six acres and was once covered
with red cedars which were sold at Boston for gate-posts.
I saw a few left, one, two feet in diameter at the ground,
which was probably standing when the Pilgrims came.

1 [Cape Cod, pp. 182-184; Riv. 219-221.]

354

JOURNAL

[July 27

Ed. Watson, who could remember them nearly fifty
years, had observed but little change in them. Hutchin¬
son calls this one of the best islands in Massachusetts
Bay. The town kept it at first as a sacred place, but
finally sold it in 1690 to Samuel Lucas, Elkanah Watson,
and George Morton. Saw a stag’s-horn sumach five
or six inches in diameter and eighteen feet high. Here
was the marsh goldenrod ( Solidago Icevigata) not yet in
blossom; a small bluish flower in the marshes, which
they called rosemary; a kind of chenopodium which
appeared distinct from the common ; and a short
oval-leaved, set-looking plant which I suppose is Glaux
maritima, sea milkwort, or saltwort.

Skates’ eggs, called in England skate-
barrows from their form, on the sand. The old cedars
were flat-topped, spreading, the stratum of the wind
drawn out.

July 28. Monday morning. Sailed [to] the Gurnet,
which runs down seven miles into the bay from Marsh¬
field. Heard the peep of the beach-bird. Saw some ring-
necks in company with peeps. They told of eagles
which had flown low over the island lately. Went by
Saquish. Gathered a basketful of Irish moss bleached
on the beach. Saw a field full of pink-blossomed pota¬
toes at the lighthouse, remarkably luxuriant and full
of blossoms; also some French barley. Old fort and
barracks by lighthouse. Visited lobster houses or huts
there, where they use lobsters to catch bait for lobsters.
Saw on the shanties signs from ships, as “ Justice Story ”
and “ Margueritta.” To obtain bait is sometimes the

A BOAT SWAMPED

355

1851]

main thing. Samphire (Salicomia), which they pickle;
also a kind of prickly samphire, which I suppose is
saltwort, or Salsola Caroliniana. Well at Clark’s Island
twenty-seven and three quarters feet deep. Cut the rock-
weed on the rocks at low tide once in two or three years.
Very valuable; more than they have time to save.

Uncle Ned told of a man who went off fishing from
back of Wellfleet in calm weather, and with great
difficulty got ashore through the surf. Those in the
other boat, who had landed, were unwilling to take
the responsibility of telling them when to pull for shore;
the one who had the helm was inexperienced. They were
swamped at once. So treacherous is this shore. Before
the wind comes, perchance, the sea may run so as to
upset and drown you on the shore. At first they thought
to pull for Provincetown, but night was coming on, and
that was distant many a long mile. Their case was a
desperate one. When they came near the shore and
saw the terrific breakers that intervened, they were
deterred. They were thoroughly frightened.1

Were troubled with skunks on this island; they must
have come over on the ice. Foxes they had seen; had
killed one woodchuck; even a large mud turtle , which
they conjectured some bird must have dropped. Musk¬
rats they had seen, and killed two raccoons once. I went
a-clamming just before night. This the clam-digger,
borrowed of Uncle Bill (Watson) in his schooner
home. The clams nearly a foot deep, but I broke
many in digging. Said not to be good now, but
we found them good eaten fresh. No sale for
1 [Cape Cod , p. 157; Riv. 187, 188.]

356

JOURNAL

[July 28

them now; fetch twenty-five cents a bucket in their
season. Barry caught squids as bait for bass. We found
many dead clams, — their shells full of sand, — called
sand clams.1 By a new clam law any one can dig clams
here. Brown’s Island, so called, a shoal off the Gurnet,
thought to have been an isle once, a dangerous place.

JJ ■ — -fj Saw here fences, the posts set in cross

sleepers, made to be removed in winter.

The finest music in a menagerie, its wildest strains,
have something in them akin to the cries of the tigers
and leopards heard in their native forests. Those strains
are not unfitted to the assemblage of wild beasts. They
express to my ear what the tiger’s stripes and the
leopard’s spots express to my eye; and they appear to
grin with satisfaction at the sound. That nature has
any place at all for music is very good.

July 29. Tuesday. A northeast wind with rain, but
the sea is the wilder for it. I heard the surf roar on the
Gurnet [in] the night, which, as Uncle Ned and Freeman
said, showed that the wind would work round east and
we should have rainy weather. It was the wave reaching
the shore before the wind. The ocean was heaped up
somewhere to the eastward, and this roar was occasioned
by its effort to preserve its equilibrium. The rut of the
sea.2 In the afternoon I sailed to Plymouth, three miles,
notwithstanding the drizzling rain, or “ drisk,” as Uncle
Ned called it. We passed round the head of Plymouth
beach, which is three miles long. I did not know till

1 [Cape Cod, pp. 109, 110; Riv. 129.]

2 [See Cape Cod , pp. 97, 98; Riv. 115.]

1851] SEALS IN PLYMOUTH HARBOR 357

afterward that I had landed where the Pilgrims did and
passed over the Rock on Hedge’s Wharf. Returning,
we had more wind and tacking to do.

Saw many seals together on a flat. Singular that these
strange animals should be so abundant here and yet
the man who lives a few miles inland never hear of
them. To him there is no report of the sea, though he
may read the Plymouth paper. The Boston papers
do not tell us that they have seals in the Harbor. The
inhabitants of Plymouth do not seem to be aware of it.
I always think of seals in connection with Esquimaux
or some other outlandish people, not in connection with
those who live on the shores of Boston and Plymouth
harbors. Yet from their windows they may daily see a
family [of] seals, the real Phoca vitulina, collected on
a flat or sporting in the waves. I saw one dashing
through the waves just ahead of our boat, going to join
his companions on the bar, — as strange to me as the
merman. No less wild, essentially, than when the Pil¬
grims came is this harbor.

It being low tide, we landed on a flat which makes
out from Clark’s Island, to while away the time, not
being able to get quite up yet. I found numerous large
holes of the sea clam in this sand (no small clams), and
dug them out easily and rapidly with my hands. Could
have got a large quantity in a short time; but here they
do not eat them ; think they will make you sick. They
were not so deep in the sand, not more than five or six
inches. I saw where one had squirted full ten feet be¬
fore the wind, as appeared by the marks of the drops
on the sand. Some small ones I found not more than a

358

JOURNAL

[July 29

quarter of an inch in length. Le Baron brought me [a]
round clam or quahog alive, with a very thick shell, and
not so nearly an isosceles triangle as the sea clam, —

more like this : O o with a protuberance on

the back. The sea clam:
row clam which

bank clam; also crab-cases, handsomely spotted. Small
crab always in a cockle-shell if not in a case of his own.
A cockle as large as my fist. Mussels, small ones,
empty shells; an extensive bank where they had died.
Occasionally a large deep-sea mussel, which some kelp
had brought up. We caught some sand eels seven or
eight inches long, — Ammodytes tobianus , according to
Storer, and not the A. lancea of Yarrell, though the size
of the last comes nearer. They were in the shallow pools
left on the sand (the flat was here pure naked yellowish
sand), and quickly buried themselves when pursued.
They are used as bait for bass. Found some sand-circles
or sandpaper, like top of a stone jug cut off, with a large
nose; said to be made by the foot of the large cockle,
which has some glutinous matter on it.1 A circle of sand
about as thick as thick pasteboard. It reminded me of
the caddis-worm cases, skate-barrows, etc., etc. I ob¬
served the shell of a sea clam one valve of which was
filled exactly even full with sand, — evenly as if it had
been heaped and then scraped off, as when men mea¬
sure by the peck. This was a fresher one of the myriad
sand-clams, and it suggested to me how the stone clams
which I had seen on Cape Cod might have been formed.

1 The nidus of the animal of Natica, — cells with eggs in sand.

A small, nar-
they called the

SHELLS AND SEAWEED

359

1851]

Perchance a clamshell was the mould in which they were
cast, and a slight hardening of the level surface, before
the whole is turned to stone, causes them to split in two.
The sand was full of stone clams in the mould.1 I saw
the kelp attached to stones half as big as my head,
which it had transported. I do not think I ever saw the
kelp in situ. Also attached to a deep-sea mussel. The
kelp is like a broad ruffled belt. The middle portion is
thicker and flat, the edges for two or three inches thinner
and fuller, so that it is fulled or ruffled, as if the edges
had been hammered. The extremity is generally worn
and ragged from the lashing of the waves. It is the
prototype of a fringed belt. Uncle Ned said that the
cows ate it.2 We saw in the shallow water a long, round
green grass, six or eight feet long, clogging up the chan¬
nel. Round grass, I think they called it. We caught a
lobster, as you might catch a mud turtle in the country,
in the shallow water, pushing him ashore with the pad¬
dle, taking hold of his tail to avoid being bitten. They
are obliged to put wooden plugs or wedges beside their
claws to prevent their tearing each other to pieces. All
weeds are bleached on the beach.

This sailing on salt water was something new to me.
The boat is such a living creature, even this clumsy
one sailing within five points of the wind. The sailboat
is an admirable invention, by which you compel the
wind to transport you even against itself. It is easier to
guide than a horse; the slightest pressure on the tiller
suffices. I think the inventor must have been greatly

1 [Cape Cod , pp. 109, 110 ; Riv. 129.]

2 [Cape Cod , pp. 68, 69 ; Riv. 79.]

360

JOURNAL

[July 29

surprised, as well as delighted, at the success of his
experiment. It is so contrary to expectation, as if the
elements were disposed to favor you. This deep, un-
fordable sea! but this wind ever blowing over it to
transport you ! At 10 p. m. it was perfectly fair and bright
starlight.

July 30. Wednesday. The house here stands within
a grove of balm-of-Gileads, horse-chestnuts, cherries,
apples, and plums, etc. Uncle Bill, who lives in his
schooner, — not turned up Numidian fashion, but an¬
chored in the mud, — whom I meant to call on yester¬
day morn, lo ! had run over to “ the Pines ” last evening,
fearing an easterly storm. He outrode the great gale in
the spring alone in the harbor, dashing about. He goes
after rockweed, lighters vessels, and saves wrecks. Now
I see him lying in the mud over at the Pines in the hori¬
zon, which place he cannot leave if he will, till flood-tide;
but he will not, it seems. This waiting for the tide is a
singular feature in the life by the shore. In leaving your
boat to-day you must always have reference to what you
are going to do the next day. A frequent answer is, “ Well,
you can’t start for two hours yet.” It is something new
to a landsman, and at first he is not disposed to wait.1
I saw some heaps of shells left by the Indians near the
northern end of the island. They were a rod in diameter
and a foot or more high in the middle, and covered with
a shorter and greener grass than the surrounding field.
Found one imperfect arrowhead.

At 10 A. m. sailed to Webster’s, past Powder Point in
1 [Cape Cod, pp. 141, 142 ; Riv. 168, 169.]

1851] WEBSTER’S NEAREST NEIGHBOR 361

Duxbury. We could see his land from the island. I was
steersman and learned the meaning of some nautical
phrases, — “ luff,” to keep the boat close to the wind
till the sails begin to flap; “bear away,” to put the sail
more at right angles with the wind; a “close haul,”
when the sails are brought and belayed nearly or quite
in a line with the vessel. On the marshes we saw
patches of a “ black grass.” A large field of wheat at
Webster’s, — half a dozen acres at least, — many ap¬
ple trees, three-thorned acacias, tulip-trees; cranberry
experiment; seaweed spread under his tomatoes. Wild
geese with black and gray heads and necks, not so
heavy and clumsy as the tame Bremens. Large, noisy
Hongkong geese. Handsome calves. Three thousand ( ?)
acres of marsh.

Talked with Webster’s nearest neighbor, Captain
Hewit, whose small farm he surrounds and endeavors
in vain to buy. A fair specimen of a retired Yankee
sea-captain turned farmer. Proud of the quantity of
carrots he had raised on a small patch. It was better
husbandry than Webster’s. He told a story of his buying
a cargo for his owners at St. Petersburg just as peace
was declared in the last war. These men are not so re¬
markable for anything as the quality of hardness. The
very fixedness and rigidity of their jaws and necks
express a sort of adamantine hardness. This is what
they have learned by contact with the elements. The
man who does not grow rigid with years and experi¬
ence ! Where is he ? What avails it to grow hard merely ?
The harder you are, the more brittle really, like the
bones of the old. How much rarer and better to grow

362

JOURNAL

[July SO

mellow! A sort of stone fruit the man bears commonly;
a bare stone it is, without any sweet and mellow peri¬
carp around it. It is like the peach which has dried to
the stone as the season advanced; it is dwindled to a
dry stone with its almond. In presence of one of these
hard men I think: “ How brittle! How easily you would
crack ! What a poor and lame conclusion ! ” I can think
of nothing but a stone in his head. Truly genial men
do not grow [hard]. It is the result of despair, this atti¬
tude of resistance. They behave like men already
driven to the wall. Notwithstanding that the speaker
trembles with infirmity while he speaks, — his hand on
the spade, — it is such a trembling as betrays a stony
nature. His hand trembles so that the full glass of
cider which he prizes to a drop will have lost half its con¬
tents before it reaches his lips, as if a tempest had arisen
in it. Hopelessly hard. But there is another view of
him. He is somebody. He has an opinion to express,
if you will wait to hear him. A certain manliness and
refreshing resistance is in him. He generally makes
Webster a call, but Webster does not want to see you
more than twenty minutes. It does not take him long to
say all he has got to say. He had not seen him to speak
to him since he had come home this time. He had sent
him over a couple of fine cod the night before. Such
a man as Hewit sees not finely but coarsely.

The eagle given by Lawrence on the hill in the buck¬
wheat field.

July 31. Thursday. Those same round shells (Scutella
parma {placenta) ?) on the sand as at Cape Cod, the

PLYMOUTH

363

1851]

live ones reddish, the dead white. Went off early this
morning with Uncle Ned to catch bass with the small
fish I had found on the sand the night before. Two of
his neighbor Albert Watson’s boys were there, — not
James, the oldest, but Edward, the sailor, and Morti¬
mer (or Mort), — in their boat. They killed some
striped bass (Labrax lineatus) with paddles in a shallow
creek in the sand, and caught some lobsters. I remarked
that the seashore was singularly clean, for, notwith¬
standing the spattering of the water and mud and
squirting of the clams and wading to and fro the boat,
my best black pants retained no stains nor dirt, as they
would acquire from walking in the country. I caught
a bass with a young — haik? (perchance), trailing
thirty feet behind while Uncle Ned paddled. They
catch them in England with a “ trawl-net.” Sometimes
they weigh seventy-five pounds here.

At 11 a. m. set sail to Plymouth. We went somewhat
out of a direct course, to take advantage of the tide,
which was coming in. Saw the site of the first house,
which was burned, on Leyden Street. Walked up the
same, parallel with the Tftwn Brook. Hill from which
Billington Sea was discovered hardly a mile from the
shore, on Watson’s grounds. Watson’s Hill, where
treaty was made across brook south of Burying Hill.
At Watson’s,1 the oriental plane, Abies Douglasii ,
ginkgo tree (q. v. on Common), a foreign hardhack,
English oak (dark-colored, small leaf), Spanish chest-

1 [Marston Watson, Thoreau’s friend and correspondent. See
Familiar Letters , passim, and especially note to letter of April 25,
1858.]

364

JOURNAL

[July 31

nut, Chinese arbor- vitae, Norway spruce (like our fir
balsam), a new kind of fir balsam. Black eagle one of
the good cherries. Fuchsias in hothouse. Earth bank
covered with cement.

Mr. Thomas Russell, who cannot be seventy, at
whose house on Leyden Street I took tea and spent
the evening, told me that he remembered to have
seen Ebenezer Cobb, a native of Plymouth, who died
in Kingston in 1801, aged one hundred and seven, who
remembered to have had personal knowledge of Pere¬
grine White, saw him an old man riding on horseback
(he lived to be eighty-three). White was born at Cape
Cod Harbor before the Pilgrims got to Plymouth.
C. Sturgis’s mother told me the same of herself at the
same time. She remembered Cobb sitting in an arm
chair like the one she herself occupied, with his silver
locks falling about his shoulders, twirling one thumb
over the other. Lyell in first volume, “Second Visit,”
page 97, published 1849,1 says: “Colonel Perkins, of
Boston, . . . informed me, in 1846, that there was but
one link wanting in the chain of personal communica¬
tion between him and Peregrine White, the first white
child bom in Massachusetts, a few days after the Pil¬
grims landed. White lived to an advanced age, and
was known to a man of the name of Cobb, whom
Colonel Perkins visited, in 1807, with some friends
who yet survive. Cobb died in 1808, the year after
Colonel Perkins saw him.”

Russell told me that he once bought some 'primitive
woodland in Plymouth which was sold at auction —
1 [Sir Charles Lyell, A Second Visit to ike United States.]

PLYMOUTH

365

1851]

the biggest pitch pines two feet diameter — for eight
shillings an acre. If he had bought enough, it would
have been a fortune. There is still forest in this town
which the axe has not touched, says George Bradford.
According to Thatcher’s History of Plymouth, there
were 11,662 acres of woodland in 1831, or twenty square
miles. Pilgrims first saw Billington Sea about Janu-
aiy 1st; visited it January 8th. The oldest stone in the
Plymouth Burying Ground, 1681. (Coles ( ?) Hill, where
those who died the first winter were buried, is said to
have been levelled and sown to conceal loss from In¬
dians.) Oldest on our hill, 1677. In Mrs. Plympton’s
garden on Leyden Street, running down to Town
Brook, saw an abundance of pears, gathered excellent
June-eating apples, saw a large lilac about eight inches
diameter. Methinks a soil may improve when at length
it has shaded itself with vegetation.

William S. Russell, the registrar at the court-house,
showed the oldest town records, for all are preserved.
On first page a plan of Leyden Street dated December,
1620, with names of settlers. They have a great many
folios. The writing plain. Saw the charter granted
by the Plymouth Company to the Pilgrims, signed by
Warwick, dated 1629, and the box in which it was
brought over, with the seal.

Pilgrim Hall. They used to crack off pieces of the
Forefathers* Rock for visitors with a cold chisel, till
the town forbade it. The stone remaining at wharf is
about seven feet square. Saw two old armchairs that
came over in the Mayflower, the large picture by Sar¬
gent, Standish’s sword, gun-barrel with which Philip

366

JOURNAL

[July 31

was killed, mug and pocket-book of Clark the mate,
iron pot of Standish, old pipe-tongs. Indian relics: a

flayer; a pot or mortar of a kind
of fire-proof stone, very hard, only

seven or eight inches long. A commission from Crom¬
well to Winslow ( ?), his signature tom off. They talk
of a monument on the Rock. The Burying Hill 165
feet high. Manomet 394 feet high by State map. Saw
more pears at Washburn’s garden. No graves of Pil¬
grims.

Seaweed generally used along shore. Saw the Prinos
glabra , ink-berry, at Billington Sea. Sandy plain with
oaks of various kinds cut in less than twenty years.
No communication with Sandwich. Plymouth end of
world; fifty miles thither by railroad. Old Colony
road poor property. Nothing saves Plymouth but the
Rock. Fern-leaved beach.

Saw the king crab {Limvlus polyphemus), horseshoe
and saucepan fish, at the Island, covered with sea-green
and buried in the sand for concealment.

In Plymouth the Convolvulus arvensis , small bind¬
weed.

VII

AUGUST, 1851
Get. 34)

Left [Plymouth] at 9 a. m., August 1st. After Kings¬
ton came Plympton, Halifax, and Hanson, all level
with frequent cedar swamps, especially the last, — also
in Weymouth.

Desor and Cabot think the jellyfish Oceania tubulosa
are buds from a polyp of genus Syncoryne. Desor,
accounting for suspended moisture or fogs over sand¬
banks (or shoals), says, the heat being abstracted by
radiation, the moisture is condensed in form of fog.

Lieutenant Walsh lost his lead and wire when 34,200
[feet], or more than six statute miles, had run out per¬
pendicularly.

I could make a list of things ill-managed. We Yan¬
kees do not deserve our fame. Viz. [$ic]: —

I went to a menagerie the other day, advertised by
a flaming show-bill as big as a barn-door. The pro¬
prietors had taken wonderful pains to collect rare and
interesting animals from all parts of the world, and
then placed by them a few stupid and ignorant fellows,
coachmen or stablers, who knew little or nothing about
the animals and were unwilling even to communicate
the little they knew. You catch a rare creature, inter¬
esting to all mankind, and then place the first biped

368

JOURNAL

[Aug.

that comes along, with but a grain more reason in
him, to exhibit and describe the former. At the expense
of millions, this rare quadruped from the sun [sic] is
obtained, and then Jack Halyard or Tom Coach-whip
is hired to explain it. Why all this pains taken to catch
in Africa, and no pains taken to exhibit in America?
Not a cage was labelled. There was nobody to tell us
how or where the animals were caught, or what they
were. Probably the proprietors themselves do not
know, — or what their habits are. They told me that
a hyena came from South America. But hardly had
we been ushered into the presence of this choice, this
admirable collection, than a ring was formed for Mas¬
ter Jack and the pony! Were they animals , then, who
had caught and exhibited these, and who had come to
see these? Would it not be worth the while to learn
something ? to have some information imparted ? The
absurdity of importing the behemoth, and then, in¬
stead of somebody appearing [to] tell which it is, to
have to while away the time , — though your curiosity is
growing desperate to learn one fact about the creature,
— to have Jack and the pony introduced ! ! ! Why, I
expected to see some descendant of Cuvier there, to im¬
prove this opportunity for a lecture on natural history!

That is what they should do, — make this an occa¬
sion for communicating some solid information. That
would be fun alive! that would be a sunny day, a sun
day, in one’s existence, not a secular day of Shetland
ponies. Not Jack and his pony and a tintamarre of
musical instruments, and a man with his head in the
lion’s mouth. First let him prove that he has got a

1851] AN ILLr-MANAGED MENAGERIE 369

head on his shoulders. I go not there to see a man hug
a lion or fondle a tiger, but to learn how he is related
to the wild beast. There’ll be All-Fools* days enough
without our creating any intentionally. The presump¬
tion is that men wish to behave like reasonable crea¬
tures; that they do not need, and are not seeking,
relaxation; that they are not dissipated. Let it be a
travelling zoological garden, with a travelling profes¬
sor to accompany it. At present, foolishly, the pro¬
fessor goes alone with his poor painted illustrations of
animals, while the menagerie takes another road, with¬
out its professor, — only its keepers, stupid coachmen.

I. M. June [ ?] & Co., or Van Amburgh & Co., are
engaged in a pecuniary speculation in which certain
wild beasts are used as the counters. Cuvier & Co. are
engaged in giving a course of lectures on Natural His¬
tory. Now why could they not put head and means
together for the benefit of mankind, and still get their
living? The present institution is imperfect precisely
because its object is to enrich Van Amburgh & Co.,
and their low aim unfits them for rendering any more
valuable service; but no doubt the most valuable course
would also be the most valuable in a pecuniary sense.
No doubt a low self-interest is a better motive force
to these enterprises than no interest at all; but a high
self-interest, which consists with the greatest advantage
of all, would be a better still.

Item 2nd: Why have we not a decent pocket-map
of the State of Massachusetts ? There is the large map.
Why is it not cut into half a dozen sheets and folded
into a small cover for the pocket ? Are there no travellers

370

JOURNAL

[Aug.

to use it ? Well, to tell the truth, there are but few, and
that ’s the reason why. Men go by railroad, and State
maps hanging in bar-rooms are small enough. The
State has been admirably surveyed at a great cost, and
yet Dearborn’s Pocket-Map is the best one we have!

Aug. 4. Now the hardhack and meadow-sweet reign,
the former one of our handsomest flowers, I think. The
mayweed, too, dusty by the roadside, and in the fields
I scent the sweet-scented life-everlasting, which is half
expanded. The grass is withered by the drought. The
potatoes begin generally to flat down. The corn is tas-
selled out; its crosses show in all fields above the blades.
The turnips are growing in its midst.

As my eye rested on the blossom of the meadow¬
sweet in a hedge, I heard the note of an autumnal
cricket, and was penetrated with the sense of autumn.
Was it sound? or was it form? or was it scent? or
was it flavor? It is now the royal month of August.
When I hear this sound, I am as dry as the rye which
is everywhere cut and housed, though I am drunk with
the season’s wine.

The farmer is the most inoffensive of men, with his
barns and cattle and poultry and grain and grass. I
like the smell of his hay well enough, though as grass it
may be in my way.

The yellow Bethlehem-star still, and the yellow
gerardia, and a bluish “savory-leaved aster.”

Aug. 5. 7.30 p. m. — Moon half full. I sit beside Hub¬
bard’s Grove. A few level red bars above the horizon;

A SUMMER EVENING

371

1851]

a dark, irregular bank beneath them, with a streak of
red sky below, on the horizon’s edge. This will describe
many a sunset. It is 8 o’clock. The farmer has driven
in his cows, and is cutting an armful of green com fod¬
der for them. Another is still patching the roof of his
bam, making his hammer heard afar in the twilight, as
if he took a satisfaction in his elevated work, — sitting
astride the ridge, — which he wished to prolong. The
robin utters a sort of cackling note, as if he had learned
the ways of man. The air is still. I hear the voices of
loud-talking boys in the early twilight, it must be a mile
off. The swallows go over with a watery twittering.

When the moon is on the increase and half full, it is
already in mid-heavens at sunset, so that there is no
marked twilight intervening. I hear the whip-poor-will
at a distance, but they are few of late.

It is almost dark. I hear the voices of berry-pickers
coming homeward from Bear Garden. Why do they
go home, as it were defeated by the approaching night ?
Did it never occur to them to stay overnight ? The wind
now rising from over Bear Garden Hill falls gently on
my ear and delivers its message, the same that I have
so often heard passing over bare and stony mountain-
tops, so uncontaminated and untamed is the wind.
The air that has swept over Caucasus and the sands of
Arabia comes to breathe on New England fields. The
dogs bark; they are not as much stiller as man. They
are on the alert, suspecting the approach of foes. The
darkness perchance affects them, makes them mad
and wild. The mosquitoes hum about me. I distin¬
guish the modest moonlight on my paper.

372

JOURNAL

[Aug. 5

As the twilight deepens and the moonlight is more
and more bright, I begin to distinguish myself, who I
am and where; as my walls contract, I become more
collected and composed, and sensible of my own exist¬
ence, as when a lamp is brought into a dark apartment
and I see who the company are. With the coolness and
the mild silvery light, I recover some sanity, my thoughts
are more distinct, moderated, and tempered. Reflection
is more possible while the day goes by. The intense
light of the sun unfits me for meditation, makes me
wander in my thought; my life is too diffuse and dissi¬
pated; routine succeeds and prevails over us; the trivial
has greater power then, and most at noonday, the most
trivial hour of the twenty-four. I am sobered by the
moonlight. I bethink myself. It is like a cup of cold
water to a thirsty man. The moonlight is more favorable
to meditation than sunlight.

The sun lights this world from without, shines in at a
window, but the moon is like a lamp within an apart¬
ment. It shines for us. The stars themselves make a
more visible, and hence a nearer and more domestic,
roof at night. Nature broods us, and has not left our
germs of thought to be hatched by the sun. We feel
her heat and see her body darkening over us. Our
thoughts are not dissipated, but come back to us like
an echo.

The different kinds of moonlight are infinite. This is
not a night for contrasts of light and shade, but a faint
diffused light in which there is light enough to travel,
and that is all.

A road (the Comer road) that passes over the height

373

1851] A MUSICAL PERFORMER

of land between earth and heaven, separating those
streams which flow earthward from those which flow
heavenward.

Ah, what a poor, dry compilation is the “ Annual of
Scientific Discovery! ” I trust that observations are made
during the year which are not chronicled there, — that
some mortal may have caught a glimpse of Nature in
some corner of the earth during the year 1851. One sen¬
tence of perennial poetry would make me forget, would
atone for, volumes of mere science. The astronomer is as
blind to the significant phenomena, or the significance
of phenomena, as the wood-sawyer who wears glasses to
defend his eyes from sawdust. The question is not what
you look at, but what you see.

I hear now from Bear Garden Hill — I rarely walk
by moonlight without hearing — the sound of a flute, or
a horn, or a human voice. It is a performer I never see
by day; should not recognize him if pointed out; but
you may hear his performance in every horizon. He
plays but one strain and goes to bed early, but I know
by the character of that single strain that he is deeply
dissatisfied with the manner in which he spends his
day. He is a slave who is purchasing his freedom. He
is Apollo watching the flocks of Admetus on every hill,
and this strain he plays every evening to remind him of
his heavenly descent. It is all that saves him, — his one
redeeming trait. It is a reminiscence ; he loves to remem¬
ber his youth. He is sprung of a noble family. He is
highly related, I have no doubt; was tenderly nurtured
in his infancy, poor hind as he is. That noble strain he
utters, instead of any jewel on his finger, or precious

374

JOURNAL

[Aug. 5

locket fastened to his breast, or purple garments that
came with him. The elements recognize him, and echo
his strain. All the dogs know him their master, though
lords and ladies, rich men and learned, know him not.
He is the son of a rich man, of a famous man who served
his country well. He has heard his sire’s stories. I
thought of the time when he would discover his parent¬
age, obtain his inheritance and sing a strain suited to
the morning hour. He cherishes hopes. I never see the
man by day who plays that clarionet.

The distant lamps in the farmhouse look like fires.
The trees and clouds are seen at a distance reflected in
the river as by day. I see Fair Haven Pond from the
Cliffs, as it were through a slight mist. It is the wildest
scenery imaginable, — a Lake of the Woods. I just
remembered the wildness of St. Anne’s. That’s the
Ultima Thule of wildness to me.

What an entertainment for the traveller, this incessant
motion apparently of the moon traversing the clouds!
Whether you sit or stand, it is always preparing new
developments for you. It is event enough for simple
minds. You all alone, the moon all alone, overcoming
with incessant victory whole squadrons of clouds above
the forests and the lakes and rivers and the mountains.
You cannot always calculate which one the moon will
undertake next.1

I see a solitary firefly over the woods.

The moon wading through clouds; though she is
eclipsed by this one, I see her shining on a more distant

1 [Excursions, pp. 829, 330; Riv. 405. See also pp. 383-385 of this
volume.]

1851] THE NEARNESS OF THE WILD 375

but lower one. The entrance into Hubbard’s Wood
above the spring, coming from the hill, is like the en¬
trance to a cave; but when you are within, there are
some streaks of light on the edge of the path.

All these leaves so still, none whispering, no birds in
motion, — how can I be else than still and thought¬
ful?

Aug. 6. The motions of circus horses are not so
expressive of music, do not harmonize so well with a
strain of music, as those of animals of the cat kind.
An Italian has just carried a hand-organ through the
village. I hear it even at Walden Wood. It is as if a
cheeta had skulked, howling, through the streets of
the village, with knotted tail, and left its perfume
there.

Neglected gardens are full of fleabane ( ?) now, not
yet in blossom. Thoroughwort has opened, and golden-
rod is gradually opening. The smooth sumach shows
its red fruit. The berries of the bristly aralia are turn¬
ing dark. The wild holly’s scarlet fruit is seen and the
red cherry (Cerasus). After how few steps, how little
exertion, the student stands in pine woods above the
Solomon’s-seal and the cow-wheat, in a place still unac¬
countably strange and wild to him, and to all civiliza¬
tion ! This so easy and so common, though our litera¬
ture implies that it is rare! We in the country make
no report of the seals and sharks in our neighborhood
to those in the city. We send them only our huckle¬
berries, not free wild thoughts.

Why does not man sleep all day as well as all night.

376 JOURNAL [Aug. 6

it seems so very natural and easy? For what is he
awake ?

A man must generally get away some hundreds or
thousands of miles from home before he can be said to
begin his travels. Why not begin his travels at home ?
Would he have to go far or look very closely to discover
novelties ? The traveller who, in this sense, pursues his
travels at home, has the advantage at any rate of a long
residence in the country to make his observations cor¬
rect and profitable. Now the American goes to Eng¬
land, while the Englishman comes to America, in order
to describe the country. No doubt there [are] some ad¬
vantages in this kind of mutual criticism. But might
there not be invented a better way of coming at the
truth than this scratch-my-back-and-I- ’11-scratch-yours
method? Would not the American, for instance, who
had himself, perchance, travelled in England and else¬
where make the most profitable and accurate traveller
in his own country? How often it happens that the
traveller’s principal distinction is that he is one who
knows less about a country than a native! Now if he
should begin with all the knowledge of a native, and add
thereto the knowledge of a traveller, both natives and
foreigners would be obliged to read his book; and the
world would be absolutely benefited. It takes a man of
genius to travel in his own country, in his native village;
to make any progress between his door and his gate.
But such a traveller will make the distances which
Hanno and Marco Polo and Cook and Ledyard went
over ridiculous. So worthy a traveller as William Bar-
tram heads his first chapter with the words, “ The author

1851] PROFITABLE INTEREST 377

sets sail from Philadelphia, and arrives at Charleston,
from whence he begins his travels.”

I am, perchance, most and most profitably interested
in the things which I already know a little about; a
mere and utter novelty is a mere monstrosity to me. I
am interested to see the yellow pine, which we have not
in Concor^J, though Michaux says it grows in Massa¬
chusetts ; or the Oriental plane, having often heard of it
and being well acquainted with its sister, the Occidental
plane; or the English oak, having heard of the royal oak
and having oaks ourselves; but the new Chinese flower,
whose cousin I do not happen to know, I pass by with
indifference. I do not know that I am very fond of
novelty. I wish to get a clearer notion of what I have
already some inkling.

These Italian boys with their hand-organs remind
me of the keepers of wild beasts in menageries, whose
whole art consists in stirring up their beasts from time
to time with a pole. I am reminded of bright flowers
and glancing birds and striped pards of the jungle;
these delicious harmonies tear me to pieces while they
charm me. The tiger’s musical smile.

How some inventions have spread! Some, brought
to perfection by the most enlightened nations, have
been surely and rapidly communicated to the most sav¬
age. The gun, for instance. How soon after the settle¬
ment of America were comparatively remote Indian
tribes, most of whose members had never seen a white
man, supplied with guns! The gun is invented by the
civilized man, and the savage in remote wildernesses on
the other side of the globe throws away his bow and

378

JOURNAL

[Aug. 6

arrows and takes up this arm. Bartram, travelling in the
Southern States between 1770 and 1780, describes the
warriors as so many gun-men.

Ah, yes, even here in Concord horizon Apollo is at
work for King Admetus! Who is King Admetus ? It is
Business, with his four prime ministers Trade and Com¬
merce and Manufactures and Agriculture. And this is
what makes mythology true and interesting to us.

Aug. 8. 7.30 p. m. — To Conantum.

The moon has not yet quite filled her horns. I per¬
ceive why we so often remark a dark cloud in the west
at and after sunset. It is because it is almost directly
between us and the sun, and hence we see the dark
side, and moreover it is much darker than it otherwise
would be, because of the little fight reflected from the
earth at that hour. The same cloud at midday and
overhead might not attract attention. There is a pure
amber sky beneath the present bank, thus framed off
from the rest of the heavens, which, with the outlines of
small dead elms seen against it, — I hardly know if far
or near, — make picture enough. Men will travel far
to see less interesting sights than this. Turning away
from the sun, we get this enchanting view, as when a man
looks at the landscape with inverted head. Under
shadow of the dark cloud which I have described, the
cricket begins his strain, his ubiquitous strain. Is there
a fall cricket distinct from the species we hear in spring
and summer ? I smell the corn-field over the brook a
dozen rods off, and it reminds me of the green-com
feasts of the Indians. The evening train comes rolling

379

1851] THE INSPIRING MELODIES

in, but none of the passengers jumping out in such
haste attend to the beautiful, fresh picture which Nature
has unrolled in the west and surmounted with that dark
frame. The circular platter of the carrot’s blossom is
now perfect.

Might not this be called the Invalid’s Moon, on ac¬
count of the warmth of the nights ? The principal em¬
ployment of the farmers now seems to be getting their
meadow-hay and cradling some oats, etc.

The light from the western sky is stronger still than
that of the moon, and when I hold up my hand, the
west side is lighted while the side toward the moon is
comparatively dark. But now that I have put this dark
wood (Hubbard’s) between me and the west, I see the
moonlight plainly on my paper; I am even startled by
it. One star, too, — is it Venus ? — I see in the west.
Starlight! that would be a good way to mark the hour,
if we were precise. Hubbard’s Brook. How much the
beauty of the moon is enhanced by being seen shin¬
ing between two trees, or even by the neighborhood of
clouds! I hear the clock striking eight faintly. I smell
the late shorn meadows.

One will lose no music by not attending the oratorios
and operas. The really inspiring melodies are cheap
and universal, and are as audible to the poor man’s son
as to the rich man’s. Listening to the harmonies of the
universe is not allied to dissipation. My neighbors have
gone to the vestry to hear “Ned Kendal,” the bugler,
to-night, but I am come forth to the hills to hear my
bugler in the horizon. I can forego the seeming advan¬
tages of cities without misgiving. No heavenly strain is

380

JOURNAL

[Aug. 8

lost to the ear that is fitted to hear it, for want of money
or opportunity. I am convinced that for instrumental
music all Vienna cannot serve me more than the Italian
boy who seeks my door with his organ.

And now I strike the road at the causeway. It is
hard, and I hear the sound of my steps, a sound which
should never be heard, for it draws down my thoughts.
It is more like the treadmill exercise. The fireflies are
not so numerous as they have been. There is no dew
as yet. The planks and railing of Hubbard’s Bridge are
removed. I walk over on the string-pieces, resting in the
middle until the moon comes out of a cloud, that I
may see my path, for between the next piers the string-
pieces also are removed and there is only a rather nar¬
row plank, let down three or four feet. I essay to cross
it, but it springs a little and I mistrust myself, whether
I shall not plunge into the river. Some demonic genius
seems to be warning me. Attempt not the passage; you
will surely be drowned. It is very real that I am thus
affected. Yet I am fully aware of the absurdity of
minding such suggestions. I put out my foot, but I am
checked, as if that power had laid a hand on my breast
and chilled me back. Nevertheless, I cross, stooping
at first, and gain the other side. (I make the most of it
on account of the admonition, but it was nothing to re¬
mark on. I returned the same way two hours later and
made nothing of it.) It is easy to see how, by yielding
to such feelings as this, men would reestablish all the
superstitions of antiquity. It is best that reason should
govern us, and not these blind intimations, in which we
exalt our fears into a genius.

1851] SOUNDS OF A SUMMER NIGHT 381

On Conantum I sit awhile in the shade of the woods
and look out on the moonlit fields. White rocks are more
remarkable than by day.1

The air is warmer than the rocks now. It is perfectly
warm and I am tempted to stay out all night and observe
each phenomenon of the night until day dawns. But
if I should do so, I should not wonder if the town were
raised to hunt me up. I could he out here on this pin¬
nacle rock all night without cold. To he here on your
back with nothing between your eye and the stars, —
nothing but space, — they your nearest neighbors on
that side, be they strange or be they tame, be they other
worlds or merely ornaments to this, who could ever go
to sleep under these circumstances ? Sitting on the door¬
step of Conant house at 9 o’clock, I hear a pear drop.
How few of all the apples that fall do we hear fall! I
hear a horse sneeze ( ?) from time to time in his pasture.
He sees me and knows me to be a man, though I do not
see him. I hear the nine o’clock bell ringing in Bedford.
An unexpectedly musical sound that of a bell in the
horizon always is. Pleasantly sounds the voice of one
village to another. It is sweet as it is rare. Since I sat
here a bright star has gone behind the stem of a tree,
proving that my machine is moving, — proving it better
for me than a rotating pendulum. I hear a solitary
whip-poor-will, and a bullfrog on the river, — fewer
sounds than in spring. The gray cliffs across the river
are plain to be seen.

And now the star appears on the other side of the
tree, and I must go. Still no dew up here. I see three
1 [Excursions, p. 327; Riv. 402.]

JOURNAL

882

[Aug. 8

scythes hanging on an apple tree. There is the wild
apple tree where hangs the forgotten scythe,1 — the
rock where the shoe was left. The woods and the sepa¬
rate trees cast longer shadows than by day, for the moon
goes lower in her course at this season. Some dew at
last in the meadow. As I recross the string-pieces of the
bridge, I see the water-bugs swimming briskly in the
moonlight. I scent the Roman wormwood in the potato-
fields.

Aug. 9. Saturday. Tansy now in bloom and the
fresh white clethra. Among the pines and birches I
hear the invisible locust. As I am going to the pond to
bathe, I see a black cloud in the northern horizon and
hear the muttering of thunder, and make haste. Before
I have bathed and dressed, the gusts which precede the
tempest are heard roaring in the woods, and the first
black, gusty clouds have reached my zenith. Hastening
toward town, I meet the rain at the edge of the wood, and
take refuge under the thickest leaves, where not a drop
reaches me, and, at the end of half an hour, the renewed
singing of the birds alone advertises me that the rain
has ceased, and it is only the dripping from the leaves
which I hear in the woods. It was a splendid sunset
that day, a celestial light on all the land, so that all peo¬
ple went to their doors and windows to look on the grass
and leaves and buildings and the sky, and it was equally
glorious in whatever quarter you looked; a sort of ful-
gor as of stereotyped lightning filled the air. Of which
this is my solution. We were in the westernmost edge of
1 [Excursions, p. 317; Riv. 389.]

1851] THE MOON’S WAR WITH CLOUDS 383

the shower at the moment the sun was setting, and its
rays shone through the cloud and the falling rain. We
were, in fact, in a rainbow and it was here its arch
rested on the earth. At a little distance we should have
seen all the colors.

The (Enothera biennis along the railroad now. Do
the cars disperse seeds? The Trichostema dichotomum
is quite beautiful now in the cool of the morning. The
epilobium in the woods still. Now the earliest apples
begin to be ripe, but none are so good to eat as some
to smell. Some knurly apple which I pick up in the
road reminds me by its fragrance of all the wealth of
Pomona.1

Aug. 12. Tuesday. 1.30 a. m. — Full moon. Arose
and went to the river and bathed, stepping very carefully
not to disturb the household, and still carefully in the
street not to disturb the neighbors. I did not walk
naturally and freely till I had got over the wall. Then
to Hubbard’s Bridge at 2 a. m. There was a whip-poor-
will in the road just beyond Goodwin’s, which flew up
and lighted on the fence and kept alighting on the fence
within a rod of me and circling round me with a slight
squeak as if inquisitive about me. I do not remember
what I observed or thought in coming hither.

The traveller’s whole employment is to calculate
what cloud will obscure the moon and what she will
triumph over. In the after-midnight hours the traveller’s
sole companion is the moon. All his thoughts are cen¬
tred in her. She is waging continual war with the clouds *
1 [Excursions, p. 295; Riv. 362.]

384 JOURNAL [Aug. 12

in his behalf. What cloud will enter the lists with her
next, this employs his thoughts; and when she enters
on a clear field of great extent in the heavens, and shines
unobstructedly, he is glad. And when she has fought
her way through all the squadrons of her foes, and rides
majestic in a clear sky, he cheerfully and confidently
pursues his way, and rejoices in his heart. But if he sees
that she has many new clouds to contend with, he pur¬
sues his way moodily, as one disappointed and aggrieved ;
he resents it as an injury to himself. It is his employ¬
ment to watch the moon, the companion and guide of
his journey, wading through clouds, and calculate what
one is destined to shut out her cheering light. He traces
her course, now almost completely obscured, through
the ranks of her foes, and calculates where she will
issue from them.1 He is disappointed and saddened
when he sees that she has many clouds to contend with.

Sitting on the sleepers of Hubbard’s Bridge, which
is being repaired, now, 3 o’clock a. m., I hear a cock
crow. How admirably adapted to the dawn is that
sound! as if made by the first rays of light rending the
darkness, the creaking of the sun’s axle heard already
over the eastern hills.

Though man’s life is trivial and handselled, Nature is
holy and heroic. With what infinite faith and promise
and moderation begins each new day! It is only a little
after 3 o’clock, and already there is evidence of morning
in the sky.

He rejoices when the moon comes forth from the

1 [Excursions, pp. 329, 330; Riv. 405, 406. See also p. 374 of this
volume.]

1851] THE FIRST SIGNS OF MORNING 385

squadrons of the clouds unscathed and there are no
more any obstructions in her path, and the cricket also
seems to express joy in his song. It does not concern
men who are asleep in their beds, but it is very impor¬
tant to the traveller, whether the moon shines bright
and unobstructed or is obscured by clouds. It is not
easy to realize the serene joy of all the earth when the
moon commences to shine unobstructedly, unless you
have often been a traveller by night.1

The traveller also resents it if the wind rises and
rustles the leaves or ripples the water and increases the
coolness at such an hour.

A solitary horse in his pasture was scared by the sud¬
den sight of me, an apparition to him, standing still in
the moonlight, and moved about, inspecting with alarm,
but I spoke and he heard the sound of my voice; he was
at once reassured and expressed his pleasure by wag¬
ging his stump of a tail, though still half a dozen rods
off. How wholesome the taste of huckleberries, when
now by moonlight I feel for them amid the bushes!

And now the first signs of morning attract the trav¬
eller’s attention, and he cannot help rejoicing, and the
moon begins gradually to fade from his recollection.
The wind rises and rustles the copses. The sand is cool
on the surface but warm two or three inches beneath,
and the rocks are quite warm to the hand, so that he
sits on them or leans against them for warmth, though
indeed it is not cold elsewhere.2 As I walk along the
side of Fair Haven Hill, I see a ripple on the river, and

1 {Excursions, pp. 329, 330; Riv. 405, 406.]

2 [See Excursions , p. 328; Riv. 403.]

386

JOURNAL

[Aug. 12

now the moon has gone behind a large and black mass
of clouds, and I realize that I may not see her again in her
glory this night, that perchance ere she rises from this
obscurity, the sun will have risen, and she will appear
but as a cloud herself, and sink unnoticed into the west
(being a little after full (a day ?)). As yet no sounds
of awakening men; only the more frequent crowing of
cocks, still standing on their perches in the bams. The
milkmen are the earliest risers, — though I see no lan-
thoms carried to their bams in the distance, — preparing
to carry the milk of cows in their tin cans for men’s
breakfasts, even for those who dwell in distant cities.
In the twilight now, by the light of the stars alone, the
moon being concealed, they are pressing the bounteous
streams from full udders into their milk-pails, and the
sound of the streaming milk is all that breaks the sacred
stillness of the dawn; distributing their milk to such as
have no cows. I perceive no mosquitoes now. Are they
vespertinal, like the singing of the whip-poor-will? I
see the light of the obscured moon reflected from the
river brightly. With what mild emphasis Nature marks
the spot! — so bright and serene a sheen that does not
more contrast with the night.

4 a. m. — It adds a charm, a dignity, a glory, to the
earth to see the light of the moon reflected from her
streams. There are but us three, the moon, the earth
which wears this jewel (the moon’s reflection) in her
crown, and myself. Now there has come round the
Cliff (on which I sit), which faces the west, all unob¬
served and mingled with the dusky sky of night, a lighter
and more ethereal living blue, whispering of the sun

THE DAWN

387

1851]

still far, far away, behind the horizon. From the sum¬
mit of our atmosphere, perchance, he may already be
seen by soaring spirits that inhabit those thin upper
regions, and they communicate the glorious intelligence
to us lower ones. The real divine , the heavenly, blue,
the Jove-containing air, it is, I see through this dusky
lower stratum. The sun gilding the summits of the air.
The broad artery of light flows over all the sky. Yet
not without sadness and compassion I reflect that I shall
not see the moon a£ain in her glory. (Not far from
four, still in the night, I heard a nighthawk squeak and
boom , high in the air, as I sat on the Cliff. What is said
about this being less of a night bird than the whip-
poor-will is perhaps to be questioned. For neither do I
remember to have heard the whip-poor-will sing at
12 o’clock, though I met one sitting and flying between
two and three this morning. I believe that both may
be heard at midnight, though very rarely.) Now at very
earliest dawn the nighthawk booms and the whip-poor-
will sings. Returning down the hill by the path to where
the woods [are] cut off, I see the signs of the day, the
morning red. There is the lurid morning star, soon to
be blotted out by a cloud.

There is an early redness in the east which I was not
prepared for, changing to amber or saffron, with clouds
beneath in the horizon and also above this clear streak.

The birds utter a few languid and yawning notes, as
if they had not left their perches, so sensible to light to
wake so soon, — a faint peeping sound from I know
not what kind, a slight, innocent, half-awake sound,
like the sounds which a quiet housewife makes in the

388

JOURNAL

[Aug. 12

earliest dawn. Nature preserves her innocence like a
beautiful child. I hear a wood thrush even now, long
before sunrise, as in the heat of the day. And the pewee
and the catbird and the vireo, red-eyed ? I do not hear
— or do not mind, perchance — the crickets now. Now
whip-poor-wills commence to sing in earnest, consid¬
erably after the wood thrush. The wood thrush, that
beautiful singer, inviting the day once more to enter
his pine woods. (So you may hear the wood thrush
and whip-poor-will at the same time.) Now go by two
whip-poor-wills, in haste seeking some coverts from the
eye of day. And the bats are flying about on the edge
of the wood, improving the last moments of their day in
catching insects. The moon appears at length, not yet
as a cloud, but with a frozen light, ominous of her fate.
The early cars sound like a wind in the woods. The
chewinks make a business now of waking each other
up with their low yorrick in the neighboring low copse.
The sun would have shown before but for the cloud.
Now, on his rising, not the clear sky, but the cheeks of
the clouds high and wide, are tinged with red, which,
like the sky before, turns gradually to saffron and then
to the white light of day.

The nettle-leaved vervain ( Verbena urticifolia) by
roadside at Emerson’s. What we have called hemp an¬
swers best to Urtica dioica , large stinging nettle? Now
the great sunflower’s golden disk is seen.

The days for some time have been sensibly shorter;
there is time for music in the evening.

I see polygonums in blossom by roadside, white and
red.

THISTLE AND BEE

389

1851]

A eupatorium from Hubbard’s Bridge causeway an¬
swers to E. purpureum, except in these doubtful points,
that the former has four leaves in a whorl, is unequally
serrate, the stem is nearly filled with a thin pith, the
corymb is not merely terminal, florets eight and nine.
Differs from verticillatum in the stem being not solid, and
I perceive no difference between calyx and corolla in
color, if I know what the two are. It may be one of the
intermediate varieties referred to.

Aug. 15. Friday. Hypericum Canadense , Canadian
St. John’s-wort, distinguished by its red capsules. The
petals shine under the microscope, as if they had a
golden dew on them.

Cnicus pumilus , pasture thistle. How many insects
a single one attracts ! While you sit by it, bee after bee
will visit it, and busy himself probing for honey and
loading hiipself with pollen, regardless of your over¬
shadowing presence. He sees its purple flower from
afar, and that use there is in its color.

Oxalis stricta , upright wood-sorrel, the little yellow
temate-leaved flower in pastures and corn-fields.

Sagittaria sagittifolia, or arrowhead. It has very
little root that I can find to eat.

Campanula crinoides , var. 2nd, slender bellflower,
vine-like like a galium, by brook-side in Depot Field.

Impatiens, noli-me-tangere, or touch-me-not, with
its dangling yellow pitchers or horns of plenty, which
I have seen for a month by damp causeway thickets,
but the whole plant was so tender and drooped so soon
I could not get it home.

390 JOURNAL [Aug. 15

May I love and revere myself above all the gods that
men have ever invented. May I never let the vestal fire
go out in my recesses.

Aug. 16. Agrimonia Eupatoria , small-flowered (yel¬
low) plant with hispid fruit, two or three feet high,
Turnpike, at Tuttle’s peat meadow. Hemp ( Cannabis
saliva ), said by Gray to have been introduced; not
named by Bigelow. Is it not a native ?

It is true man can and does live by preying on other
animals, but this is a miserable way of sustaining him¬
self, and he will be regarded as a benefactor of his race,
along with Prometheus and Christ, who shall teach
men to live on a more innocent and wholesome diet. Is
it not already acknowledged to be a reproach that man
is a carnivorous animal ? 1

Aug. 17. For a day or two it has been quite cool, a
coolness that was felt even when sitting by an open win¬
dow in a thin coat on the west side of the house in the
morning, and you naturally sought the sun at that hour.
The coolness concentrated your thought, however. As
I could not command a sunny window, I went abroad
on the morning of the 15th and lay in the sun in the
fields in my thin coat, though it was rather cool even
there. I feel as if this coolness would do me good. If
it only makes my life more pensive! Why should pen¬
siveness be akin to sadness ? There is a certain fertile
sadness which I would not avoid, but rather earnestly
seek. It is positively joyful to me. It saves my life from
1 [ Walden , p. 238 ; Riv. 336.]

1851] DELIGHT IN NATURE 391

being trivial. My life flows with a deeper current, no
longer as a shallow and brawling stream, parched and
shrunken by the summer heats. This coolness comes
to condense the dews and clear the atmosphere. The
stillness seems more deep and significant. Each sound
seems to come from out a greater thoughtfulness in
nature, as if nature had acquired some character and
mind. The cricket, the gurgling stream, the rushing
wind amid the trees, all speak to me soberly yet en¬
couragingly of the steady onward progress of the uni¬
verse. My heart leaps into my mouth at the sound of
the wind in the woods. I, whose life was but yesterday
so desultory and shallow, suddenly recover my spirits,
my spirituality, through my hearing. I see a goldfinch
go twittering through the still, louring day, and am re¬
minded of the peeping flocks which will soon herald the
thoughtful season. Ah! if I could so live that there
should be no desultory moment in all my life ! that in
the trivial season, when small fruits are ripe, my fruits
might be ripe also! that I could match nature always
with my moods ! that in each season when some part of
nature especially flourishes, then a corresponding part
of me may not fail to flourish! Ah, I would walk, I
would sit and sleep, with natural piety! What if I could
pray aloud or to myself as I went along by the brook-
sides a cheerful prayer like the birds ! For joy I could
embrace the earth; I shall delight to be buried in it.
And then to think of those I love among men, who will
know that I love them though I tell them not! I some¬
times feel as if I were rewarded merely for expecting
better hours. I did not despair of worthier moods, and

392

JOURNAL

[Aug. 17

now I have occasion to be grateful for the flood of life
that is flowing over me. I am not so poor : I can smell
the ripening apples; the very rills are deep; the au¬
tumnal flowers, the Trichostema dichotomum, — not only
its bright blue flower above the sand, but its strong
wormwood scent which belongs to the season, — feed
my spirit, endear the earth to me, make me value my¬
self and rejoice; the quivering of pigeons* wings re¬
minds me of the tough fibre of the air which they rend.
I thank you, God. I do not deserve anything, I am
unworthy of the least regard; and yet I am made to
rejoice. I am impure and worthless, and yet the world
is gilded for my delight and holidays are prepared for
me, and my path is strewn with flowers. But I cannot
thank the Giver; I cannot even whisper my thanks to
those human friends I have. It seems to me that I am
more rewarded for my expectations than for anything I
do or can do. Ah, I would not tread on a cricket in
whose song is such a revelation, so soothing and cheer¬
ing to my ear ! Oh, keep my senses pure ! And why should
I speak to my friends ? for how rarely is it that I am I ;
and are they, then, they ? We will meet, then, far away.
The seeds of the summer are getting dry and falling
from a thousand nodding heads. If I did not know you
through thick and thin, how should I know you at all ?
Ah, the very brooks seem fuller of reflections than they
were ! Ah, such provoking sibylline sentences they are !
The shallowest is all at once unfathomable. How can
that depth be fathomed where a man may see himself
reflected ? The rill I stopped to drink at I drink in more
than I expected. I satisfy and still provoke the thirst

1851] THE SNAKE IN THE STOMACH 393

of thirsts. Nut Meadow Brook where it crosses the
road beyond Jenny Dugan’s that was. I do not drink
in vain. I mark that brook as if I had swallowed a water
snake that would live in my stomach. I have swallowed
something worth the while. The day is not what it was
before I stooped to drink. Ah, I shall hear from that
draught! It is not in vain that I have drunk. I have
drunk an arrowhead. It flows from where all fountains
rise.

How many ova have I swallowed ? Who knows what
will be hatched within me ? There were some seeds of
thought, methinks, floating in that water, which are
expanding in me. The man mtist not drink of the run¬
ning streams, the living waters, who is not prepared to
have all nature reborn in him, — to suckle monsters.
The snake in my stomach lifts his head to my mouth at
the sound of running water. When was it that I swal¬
lowed a snake? I have got rid of the snake in my
stomach. I drank of stagnant waters once. That ac¬
counts for it. I caught him by the throat and drew him
out, and had a well day after all. Is there not such a
thing as getting rid of the snake which you have swal¬
lowed when young, when thoughtless you stooped and
drank at stagnant waters, which has worried you in
your waking hours and in your sleep ever since, and
appropriated the life that was yours ? Will he not ascend
into your mouth at the sound of running water ? Then
catch him boldly by the head and draw him out, though
you may think his tail be curled about your vitals.

The farmers are just finishing their meadow-haying.
(To-day is Sunday.) Those who have early potatoes

394

JOURNAL

[Aug. 17

may be digging them, or doing any other job which the
haying has obliged them to postpone. For six weeks
or more this has been the farmer’s work, to shave the
surface of the fields and meadows clean. This is done
all over the country. The razor is passed over these
parts of nature’s face the country over. A thirteenth
labor which methinks would have broken the back of
Hercules, would have given him a memorable sweat,
accomplished with what sweating of scythes and early
and late! I chance [to] know one young man who has
lost his life in this season’s campaign, by overdoing. In
haying time some men take double wages, and they are
engaged long before in the spring. To shave all the
fields and meadows of New England clean ! If men did
this but once, and not every year, we should never hear
the last of that labor; it would be more famous in each
farmer’s case than Buonaparte’s road over the Simplon.
It has no other bulletin but the truthful “ Farmer’s Al¬
manac.” Ask them where scythe-snaths are made and
sold, and rifles too, if it is not a real labor. In its very wea¬
pons and its passes it has the semblance of war. Mexico
was won with less exertion and less true valor than are
required to do one season’s haying in New England. The
former work was done by those who played truant and
ran away from the latter. Those Mexicans were mown
down more easily than the summer’s crop of grass in
many a farmer’s fields. Is there not some work in New
England men? This haying is no work for marines,
nor for deserters ; nor for United States troops, so called,
nor for West Point cadets. It would wilt them, and they
would desert. Have they not deserted ? and run off to

THE HAYING

395

1851]

West Point ? Every field is a battle-field to the mower,
— a pitched battle too, — and whole winrows of dead
have covered it in the course of the season. Early and
late the farmer has gone forth with his formidable
scythe, weapon of time. Time’s weapon, and fought the
ground inch by inch. It is the summer’s enterprise. And
if we were a more poetic people, horns would be blown
to celebrate its completion. There might be a Hay¬
makers’ Day. New England’s peaceful battles. At
Bunker Hill there were some who stood at the rail-
fence and behind the winrows of new-mown hay.1 They
have not yet quitted the field. They stand there still;
they alone have not retreated.

The Polygala sanguinea , caducous polygala, in damp
ground, with red or purple heads. The dandelion still
blossoms, and the lupine still, belated.

I have been to Tarbell’s Swamp by the Second Divi¬
sion this afternoon, and to the Marlborough road.

It has promised rain all day; cloudy and still and
rather cool; from time to time a few drops gently spit¬
ting, but no shower. The landscape wears a sober
autumnal look. I hear a drop or two on my hat. I wear
a thick coat. The birds seem to know that it will not
rain just yet. The swallows skim low over the pastures,
twittering as they fly near me with forked tail, dashing
near me as if I scared up insects for them. I see where a
squirrel has been eating hazelnuts on a stump.

Tarbell’s Swamp is mainly composed of low and even
but dense beds of Andromeda calyculata, or dwarf an-
dromeda, which bears the early flower in the spring.

1 Stark and his companions met the enemy in the hay-field.

396

JOURNAL

[Aug. 17

Here and there, mingled with it, is the water ( ?) an-
dromeda; also pitch pines, birches, hardhack, and the
common alder (Alnus serrulata), and, in separate and
lower beds, the cranberry; and probably the Rhodora
Canadensis might be found.

The lead-colored berries of the Viburnum dentatum
now. Cow-wheat and indigo-weed still in bloom by the
dry wood-path-side, and Norway cinquefoil. I detected
a wild apple on the Marlborough road by its fragrance, in
the thick woods; small stems, four inches in diameter,
falling over or leaning like rays on every side; a clean
white fruit, the ripest yellowish, a pleasant acid. The
fruit covered the ground. It is unusual to meet with an
early apple thus wild in the thickest woods. It seemed
admirable to me. One of the noblest of fruits. With
green specks under the skin.

Prenanthes alba , white-flowering prenanthes, with its
strange halbert and variously shaped leaves; neottia;
and hypericum.

I hear the rain (11 p. m.) distilling upon the ground,
wetting the grass and leaves. The melons needed it.
Their leaves were curled and their fruit stinted.

I am less somnolent for the cool season. I wake to a
perennial day.

The hayer’s work is done, but I hear no boasting,
no firing of guns nor ringing of bells. He celebrates it
by going about the work he had postponed “till after
haying”! If all this steadiness and valor were spent
upon some still worthier enterprise!!

All men’s employments, all trades and professions, in
some of their aspects are attractive. Hence the boy I

DOGS AND COWS

397

1851]

knew, having sucked cider at a minister’s cider-mill, re¬
solved to be a minister and make cider, not think¬
ing, boy as he was, how little fun there was in being a
minister, willing to purchase that pleasure at any price.
When I saw the carpenters the other day repairing
Hubbard’s Bridge, their bench on the new planking
they had laid over the water in the sun and air, with no
railing yet to obstruct the view, I was almost ready to
resolve that I would be a carpenter and work on bridges,
to secure a pleasant place to work. One of the men had
a fish-line cast round a sleeper, which he looked at from
time to time.

John Potter told me that those root fences on the
Comer road were at least sixty or seventy years old.1
I see a solitary goldfinch now and then.

Ilieracium Marianum or scabrum; H. Kalmii or
Canadense; Marlborough road. Leontodon autumnale
passim.

Aug. 18. It plainly makes men sad to think. Henfce
pensiveness is akin to sadness.

Some dogs, I have noticed, have a propensity to worry
cows. They go off by themselves to distant pastures,
and ever and anon, like four-legged devils, they worry
the cows, — literally full of the devil. They are so full
of the devil they know not what to do. I come to inter¬
fere between the cows and their tormentors. Ah, I
grieve to see the devils escape so easily by their swift

1 Some were drawn out of the swamp behind Abiel Wheeler’s.
Old lady Potter tells me she cannot remember when they were not
there.

398

JOURNAL

[Aug. 18

limbs, imps of mischief! They are the dog state of those
boys who pull down hand-bills in the streets. Their
next migration perchance will be into such dogs as these,
ignoble fate! The dog, whose office it should be to guard
the herd, turned its tormentor. Some courageous cow
endeavoring in vain to toss the nimble devil.

Those soldiers in the Champ de Mars 1 at Montreal
convinced me that I had arrived in a foreign country
under a different government, where many are under
the control of one. Such perfect drill could never be in
a republic. Yet it had the effect on us as when the
keeper shows his animals’ claws. It was the English
leopard showing his claws. The royal something or
other.2 I have no doubt that soldiers well drilled, as
a class, are peculiarly destitute of originality and inde¬
pendence. The men were dressed above their condition;
had the bearing of gentlemen without a corresponding
intellectual culture.3

The Irish was a familiar element, but the Scotch a
novel one. The St. Andrew’s Church was prominent,
and sometimes I was reminded of Edinburgh, — in¬
deed, much more than of London.

Warburton remarked, soon after landing at Quebec,
that everything was cheap in that country but men.
My thought, when observing how the wooden pavements
were sawed by hand in the streets, instead of by ma¬
chinery, because labor was cheap, how cheap men are
here ! 4

1 [See Excursion st pp. 16, 17; Riv. 20.]

3 [ExcursionSy p. 79; Riv. 98.]

* [Excursions, p. 27; Riv. 32, 33.]

4 [Excursions, pp. 29, 30; Riv. 36.]

CANADA

S99

1851]

It is evident that a private man is not worth so much
in Canada as in the United States, and if that is the bulk
of a man’s property, i. e. the being private and peculiar,
he had better stay here. An Englishman, methinks, not
to speak of other nations, habitually regards himself
merely as a constituent part of the English nation; he
holds a recognized place as such; he is a member of the
royal regiment of Englishmen. And he is proud of his
nation. But an American cares very little about such,
and greater freedom and independence are possible to
him. He is nearer to the primitive condition of man.
Government lets him alone, and he lets government
alone.1

I often thought of the Tories and refugees who settled
in Canada at [the time of] the Revolution. These Eng¬
lish were to a considerable extent their descendants.

Quebec began to be fortified in a more regular man¬
ner in 1690.

The most modern fortifications have an air of an¬
tiquity about them ; they have the aspect of ruins in bet¬
ter or worse repair, — ruins kept in repair from the
day they were built, though they were completed yester¬
day, — because they are not in a true sense the work
of this age. I couple them with the dismantled Spanish
forts to be found in so many parts of the world. They
carry me back to the Middle Ages, and the siege of
Jerusalem, and St. Jean d’Acre, and the days of the
Bucaniers. Such works are not consistent with the
development of the intellect. Huge stone structures of
all kinds, both by their creation and their influence,
1 [Excursions, pp. 82, 83; Riv. 102.]

400

JOURNAL

[Aug. 18

rather oppress the intellect than set it free. A little
thought will dismantle them as fast as they are built.
They are a bungling contrivance. It is an institution
as rotten as the church. The sentinel with his musket
beside a man with his umbrella is spectral. There is *
not sufficient reason for his existence. My friend there,
with a bullet resting on half an ounce of powder, does
he think that he needs that argument in conversing with
me? Of what use this fortification, to look at it from
the soldier’s point of view ? General Wolfe sailed by it
with impunity, and took the town of Quebec without
experiencing any hindrance from its fortifications. How
often do we have to read that the enemy occupied a
position which commanded the old, and so the fort
was evacuated!1

How impossible it is to give that soldier a good edu¬
cation, without first making him virtually a deserter.2

It is as if I were to come to a country village sur¬
rounded with palisadoes in the old Indian style, —
interesting as a relic of antiquity and barbarism. A
fortified town is a man cased in the heavy armor of
antiquity, and a horse-load of broadswords and small-
arms slung to him, endeavoring to go about his business.

The idea seemed to be that some time the inhabit¬
ants of Canada might wish to govern themselves, and
this was to hinder. But the inhabitants of California
succeed well without any such establishment.8 There
would be the same sense in a man’s wearing a breast¬
plate all his days for fear somebody should fire a bullet

1 [Excursions, pp. 77-79; Riv. 95-98.]

2 [Excursions, p. 27; Riv. 33.] 8 [Excursions, p. 78; Riv. 97.]

401

1851] PREHENSILE INTELLECTS

at his vitals. The English in Canada seem to be every¬
where prepared and preparing for war. In the United
States they are prepared for anything; they may even
be the aggressors. This is a ruin kept in a remarkably
good repair. There are some eight hundred or a thou¬
sand men there to exhibit it. One regiment goes bare¬
legged to increase the attraction. If you wish to study
the muscles of the leg about the knee, repair to Quebec.1

Aug. 19. Clematis Virginiana; calamint; Lycopus
Europeus, water horehound.

This is a world where there are flowers. Now, at
5 a. m., the fog, which in the west looks like a wreath
of hard-rolled cotton-batting, is rapidly dispersing. The
echo of the railroad whistle is heard the horizon round;
the gravel train is starting out. The farmers are cra¬
dling oats in some places. For some days past I have
noticed a red maple or two about the pond, though we
have had no frost. The grass is veiy wet with dew this
morning.

The way in which men cling to old institutions after
the life has departed out of them, and out of themselves,
reminds me of those monkeys which cling by their tails,
— aye, whose tails contract about the limbs, even the dead
limbs, of the forest, and they hang suspended beyond
the hunter’s reach long after they are dead. It is of no
use to argue with such men. They have not an appre¬
hensive intellect, but merely, as it were, a prehensile
tail. Their intellect possesses merely the quality of a
prehensile tail. The tail itself contracts around the dead
1 [Excursions, p. 79; Riv. 98.]

402

JOURNAL

[Aug. 19

limb even after they themselves are dead, and not till
sensible corruption takes place do they fall. The black
howling monkey, or caraya. According to Azara, it is
extremely difficult to get at them, for “when mortally
wounded they coil the tail round a branch, and hang
by it with the head downwards for days after death,
and until, in fact, decomposition begins to take effect.”
The commenting naturalist says, “A singular pecu¬
liarity of this organ is to contract at its extremity of its
own accord as soon as it is extended to its full length.”
I relinquish argument, I wait for decomposition to take
place, for the subject is dead; as I value the hide for
the museum. They say, “ Though you ’ve got my soul,
you sha’n’t have my carcass.”

P. M. — To Marlborough Road via Clamshell Hill,
Jenny Dugan’s, Round Pond, Canoe Birch Road
(Deacon Dakin’s), and White Pond.

How many things concur to keep a man at home, to
prevent his yielding to his inclination to wander! If I
would extend my walk a hundred miles, I must carry
a tent on my back for shelter at night or in the rain, or
at least I must carry a thick coat to be prepared for a
change in the weather. So that it requires some resolu¬
tion, as well as energy and foresight, to undertake the
simplest journey. Man does not travel as easily as the
birds migrate. He is not everywhere at home, like flies.
When I think how many things I can conveniently carry,
I am wont to think it most convenient to stay at home.
My home, then, to a certain extent is the place where I
keep my thick coat and my tent and some books which

1851] THE POET AND HIS MOODS 403

I cannot cany; where, next, I can depend upon meet¬
ing some friends; and where, finally, I, even I, have
established myself in business. But this last in my case
is the least important qualification of a home.

The poet must be continually watching the moods
of his mind, as the astronomer watches the aspects of
the heavens. What might we not expect from a long
life faithfully spent in this wise ? The humblest observer
would see some stars shoot. A faithful description as
by a disinterested person of the thoughts which visited
a certain mind in threescore years and ten, as when
one reports the number and character of the vehicles
which pass a particular point. As travellers go round
the world and report natural objects and phenomena,
so faithfully let another stay at home and report the
phenomena of his own life, — catalogue stars, those
thoughts whose orbits are as rarely calculated as comets.
It matters not whether they visit my mind or yours, —
whether the meteor falls in my field or in yours, — only
that it come from heaven. (I am not concerned to
express that kind of truth which Nature has expressed.
Who knows but I may suggest some things to her?
Time was when she was indebted to such suggestions
from another quarter, as her present advancement
shows. I deal with the truths that recommend them¬
selves to me, — please me, — not those merely which
any system has voted to accept.) A meteorological
journal of the mind. You shall observe what occurs in
your latitude, I in mine.

Some institutions — most institutions, indeed — have
had a divine origin. But of most that we see pre-

404

JOURNAL

[Aug. 19

vailing in society nothing but the form, the shell, is left;
the life is extinct, and there is nothing divine in them.
Then the reformer arises inspired to reinstitute life,
and whatever he does or causes to be done is a reestab¬
lishment of that same or a similar divineness. But some,
who never knew the significance of these instincts, are,
by a sort of false instinct, found clinging to the shells.
Those who have no knowledge of the divine appoint
themselves defenders of the divine, as champions of the
church, etc. I have been astonished to observe how
long some audiences can endure to hear a man speak
on a subject which he knows nothing about, as religion
for instance, when one who has no ear for music might
with the same propriety take up the time of a musical
assembly with putting through his opinions on music.
This young man who is the main pillar of some divine
institution, — does he know what he has undertaken ?
If the saints were to come again on earth, would they
be likely to stay at his house ? would they meet with his
approbation even ? Ne sutor ultra crepidam. They who
merely have a talent for affairs are forward to express
their opinions. A Roman soldier sits there to decide upon
the righteousness of Christ. The world does not long
endure such blunders, though they are made every day.
The weak-brained and pusillanimous farmers would
fain abide by the institutions of their fathers. Their
argument is they have not long to live, and for that little
space let them not be disturbed in their slumbers ; blessed
are the peacemakers; let this cup pass from me, etc.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not
stood up to live! Methinks that the moment my legs

1851] REVOLUTION OF THE SEASONS 405

begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow, as if I had
given vent to the stream at the lower end and conse¬
quently new fountains flowed into it at the upper. A
thousand rills which have their rise in the sources of
thought burst forth and fertilize my brain. You need to
increase the draught below, as the owners of meadows
on Concord River say of the Billerica Dam. Only while
we are in action is the circulation perfect. The writ¬
ing which consists with habitual sitting is mechanical,
wooden, dull to read.

The grass in the high pastures is almost as dry as
hay. The seasons do not cease a moment to revolve, and
therefore Nature rests no longer at her culminating
point than at any other. If you are not out at the right
instant, the summer may go by and you not see it. How
much of the year is spring and fall! how little can be
called summer! The grass is no sooner grown than it
begins to wither. How much Nature herself suffers
from drought ! It seems quite as much as she can do to
produce these crops.

The most inattentive walker can see how the science
of geology took its rise. The inland hills and promon¬
tories betray the action of water on their rounded sides
as plainly as if the work were completed yesterday. He
sees it with but half an eye as he walks, and forgets
his thought again. Also the level plains and more recent
meadows and marine shells found on the tops of hills.
The geologist painfully and elaborately follows out these
suggestions, and hence his fine-spun theories.

The goldfinch, though solitary, is now one of the
commonest birds in the air.

406

JOURNAL

[Aug. 19

What if a man were earnestly and wisely to set about
recollecting and preserving the thoughts which he has
had ! How many perchance are now irrecoverable ! Call¬
ing in his neighbors to aid him.

I do not like to hear the name of particular States
given to birds and flowers which are found in all equally,
— as Maryland yellow-throat, etc., etc. The Canadenses
and Virginicas may be suffered to pass for the most part,
for there is historical as well as natural reason at least
for them. Canada is the peculiar country of some and
the northern limit, of many more plants. And Virginia,
which was originally the name for all the Atlantic shore,
has some right to stand for the South.

The fruit of the sweet-gale by Nut Meadow Brook is
of a yellowish green now and has not yet its greasy feel.

The little red-streaked and dotted excrescences on
the shrub oaks I find as yet no name for.

Now for the pretty red capsules or pods of the Hyperi¬
cum Canadense.

White goldenrod is budded along the Marlborough
road.

Chickadees and jays never fail. The cricket’s is a
note which does not attract you to itself. It is not easy
to find one.

I fear that the character of my knowledge is from
year to year becoming more distinct and scientific; that,
in exchange for views as wide as heaven’s cope, I am
being narrowed down to the field of the microscope.
I see details, not wholes nor the shadow of the whole. I
count some parts, and say, “ I know.” The cricket’s
chirp now fills the air in dry fields near pine woods.

407

1851] RATTLESNAKE-PLANTAIN

Gathered our first watermelon to-day. By the Marl¬
borough road I notice the richly veined leaves of the
Neottia pubescens , or veined neottia, rattlesnake-plan¬
tain. I like this last name very well, though it might not
be easy to convince a quibbler or proser of its fitness.
We want some name to express the mystic wildness of
its rich leaves. Such work as men imitate in their
embroidery, unaccountably agreeable to the eye, as if it
answered its end only when it met the eye of man ; a
reticulated leaf, visible only on one side; little things
which make one pause in the woods, take captive the
eye.

Here is a bees’ or wasps’ nest in the sandy, mouldering
bank by the roadside, four inches in diameter, as if made
of scales of striped brown paper. It is singular if indeed
man first made paper and then discovered its resem¬
blance to the work of the wasps, and did not derive the
hint from them.

Canoe birches by road to Dakin’s. Cuticle stripped
off; inner bark dead and scaling off; new (inner)
bark formed.

The Solomon’s-seals are fruited now, with finely
red-dotted berries.

There was one original name well given, Buster Ken¬
dal.1 The fragrance of the clethra fills the air by water¬
sides. In the hollows where in winter is a pond, the grass
is short, thick, and green still, and here and there are
tufts pulled up as if by the mouth of cows.

Small rough sunflower by side of road between canoe
birch and White Pond, — Helianthus divaricatus.

1 [See Excursions, p. 290; also Journal , vol. in, p. 117.]

408 JOURNAL [Aug. 19

Lespedeza capitata, shrubby lespedeza. White Pond
road and Marlborough road.

L. polystachya, hairy lespedeza, Comer road beyond
Hubbard’s Bridge.

Aug. 20. 2 p. m. — To Lee’s Bridge via Hubbard’s
Wood, Potter’s field, Conantum, returning by Abel
Minott’s house. Clematis Brook, Baker’s pine plain,
and railroad.

I hear a cricket in the Depot Field, walk a rod or two,
and find the note proceeds from near a rock. Partly
under a rock, between it and the roots of the grass, he
lies concealed, — for I pull away the withered grass with
my hands, — uttering his night-like creak, with a vibra¬
tory motion of his wings, and flattering himself that it is
night, because he has shut out the day. He was a black
fellow nearly an inch long, with two long, slender feelers.
They plainly avoid the light and hide their heads in the
grass. At any rate they regard this as the evening of
the year. They are remarkably secret and unobserved,
considering how much noise they make. Every milkman
has heard them all his life; it is the sound that fills his
ears as he drives along. But what one has ever got off his
cart to go in search of one ? I see smaller ones moving
stealthily about, whose note I do not know. Who ever
distinguished their various notes, which fill the crevices
in each other’s song ? It would be a curious ear, indeed,
that distinguished the species of the crickets which it
heard, and traced even the earth-song home, each part
to its particular performer. I am afraid to be so knowing.
They are shy as birds * these little bodies. Those nearest

BOTANICAL TERMS

409

1851]

me continually cease their song as I walk, so that the
singers are always a rod distant, and I cannot easily
detect one. It is difficult, moreover, to judge correctly
whence the sound proceeds. Perhaps this wariness is
necessary to save them from insectivorous birds, which
would otherwise speedily find out so loud a singer.
They are somewhat protected by the universalness of
the sound, each one’s song being merged and lost in the
general concert, as if it were the creaking of earth’s
axle. They are very numerous in oats and other grain,
which conceals them and yet affords a clear passage. I
never knew any drought or sickness so to prevail as to
quench the song of the crickets; it fails not in its season,
night or day.

The Lobelia inflata, Indian-tobacco, meets me at
every turn. At first I suspect some new bluish flower
in the grass, but stooping see the inflated pods. Tasting
one such herb convinces me that there are such things
as drugs which may either kill or cure.1

The Rhexia Virginica is a showy flower at present.

How copious and precise the botanical language to
describe the leaves, as well as the other parts of a plant!
Botany is worth studying if only for the precision of its
terms, — to learn the value of words and of system. It
is wonderful how much pains has been taken to describe
a flower’s leaf, compared for instance with the care that
is taken in describing a psychological fact. Suppose as
much ingenuity (perhaps it would be needless) in mak¬
ing a language to express the sentiments ! We are armed

1 A farmer tells me that he knows when his horse has eaten it, be¬
cause it makes him slobber badly.

410

JOURNAL

[Aug. 20

with language adequate to describe each leaf in the field,
or at least to distinguish it from each other, but not to
describe a human character. With equally wonderful
indistinctness and confusion we describe men. The pre¬
cision and copiousness of botanical language applied to
the description of moral qualities!

The neottia, or ladies’-tresses, behind Garfield’s
house. The golden robin is now a rare bird to see. Here
are the small, lively-tasting blackberries, so small they
are not commonly eaten. The grasshoppers seem no
drier than the grass. In Lee’s field are two kinds of
plantain. Is the common one found there ?

The willow reach by Lee’s Bridge has been stripped
for powder. None escapes. This morning, hearing a
cart, I looked out and saw George Dugan going by with
a horse-load of his willow toward Acton powder-mills,
which I had seen in piles by the turnpike. Every travel¬
ler has just as particular an errand which I might like¬
wise chance to be privy to.

Now that I am at the extremity of my walk, I see a
threatening cloud blowing up from the south, which
however, methinks, will not compel me to make haste.

Apios tuberosa , or Glycine Apios , ground-nut. The
prenanthes now takes the place of the lactucas, which
are gone to seed.

In the dry ditch, near Abel Minott’s house that was,
I see cardinal-flowers, with their red artillery, reminding
me of soldiers, — red men, war, and bloodshed. Some
are four and a half feet high. Thy sins shall be as
scarlet. Is it my sins that I see ? It shows how far a little
color can go; for the flower is not large, yet it makes

411

1851] THE CARDINAL-FLOWER

itself seen from afar, and so answers the purpose for
which it was colored completely. It is remarkable for
its intensely brilliant scarlet color. You are slow to con¬
cede to it a high rank among flowers, but ever and anon,
as you turn your eyes away, it dazzles you and you pluck
it. Scutellaria lateriflora , side-flowering skullcap, here.
This brook deserves to be called Clematis Brook
(though that name is too often applied), for the clema¬
tis is veiy abundant, running over the alders and other
bushes on its brink. Where the brook issues from the
pond, the nightshade grows profusely, spreading five
or six feet each way, with its red berries now ripe. It
grows, too, at the upper end of the pond. But if it is the
button-bush that grows in the now low water, it should
rather be called the Button-Bush Pond. Now the tall
rush is in its prime on the shore here, and the clematis
abounds by this pond also.

I came out by the leafy-columned elm under Mt.
Misery, where the trees stood up one above another,
higher and higher, immeasurably far to my imagination,
as on the side of a New Hampshire mountain.

On the pitch pine plain, at first the pines are far
apart, with a wiry grass between, and goldenrod and
hardhack and St. John’s-wort and blackberry vines,
each tree merely keeping down the grass for a space
about itself, meditating to make a forest floor; and here
and there younger pines are springing up. Further
in, you come to moss-covered patches, dry, deep white
moss, or almost bare mould, half covered with pine
needles. Thus begins the future forest floor.

The sites of the shanties that once stood by the rail-

412

JOURNAL

[Aug. 20

road in Lincoln when the Irish built it, the still remain¬
ing hollow square mounds of earth which formed their
embankments, are to me instead of barrows and druidical
monuments and other ruins. It is a sufficient antiquity
to me since they were built, their material being earth.
Now the Canada thistle and the mullein crown their
tops. I see the stones which made their simple chimneys
still left one upon another at one end, which were sur¬
mounted with barrels to eke them out; and clean boiled
beef bones and old shoes are strewn about. Otherwise
it is a clean ruin, and nothing is left but a mound, as in
the graveyard.

Sium linear e, a kind of water-parsnip, whose blossom
resembles the Cicuta maculata. The flowers of the blue
vervain have now nearly reached the summit of their
spikes.

A traveller who looks at things with an impartial eye
may see what the oldest inhabitant has not observed.

Aug. 21. To a great extent the feudal system still
prevails there (in Canada), and I saw that I should be
a bad citizen, that any man who thought for himself
and was only reasonably independent would naturally
be a rebel. You could not read or hear of their laws
without seeing that it was a legislating for a few and
not for all. That certainly is the best government where
the inhabitants are least often reminded of the govern¬
ment. (Where a man cannot be a poet even without
danger of being made poet-laureate ! Where he cannot
be healthily neglected, and grow up a man, and not an
Englishman merely!) Where it is the most natural thing

GOVERNMENT

413

1851]

in the world for a government that does not understand
you, to let you alone. Oh, what a government were
there, my countrymen! It is a government, that Eng¬
lish one, — and most other European ones, — that
cannot afford to be forgotten, as you would naturally
forget them, that cannot let you go alone, having learned
to walk. It appears to me that a true Englishman can
only speculate within bounds; he has to pay his respects
to so many things that before he knows it he has paid
all he is worth. The principal respect in which our gov¬
ernment is more tolerable is in the fact that there is so
much less of government with us. In the States it is
only once in a dog’s age that a man need remember his
government, but here he is reminded of it every day.
Government parades itself before you. It is in no sense
the servant but the master.1

What a faculty must that be which can paint the
most barren landscape and humblest life in glorious
colors! It is pure and invigorated senses reacting on
a sound and strong imagination. Is not that the poet’s
case? The intellect of most men is barren. They
neither fertilize nor are fertilized. It is the marriage of
the soul with Nature that makes the intellect fruitful,
that gives birth to imagination. When we were dead
and dry as the highway, some sense which has been
healthily fed will put us in relation with Nature, in sym¬
pathy with her; some grains of fertilizing pollen, float¬
ing in the air, fall on us, and suddenly the sky is all
one rainbow, is full of music and fragrance and flavor.
The man of intellect only, the prosaic man, is a barren,
1 [Excursions, p. 83; Riv. 102, 103.]

414

JOURNAL

[Aug.

staminiferous flower; the poet is a fertile and perfect
flower. Men are such confirmed arithmeticians and
slaves of business that I cannot easily find a blank-book
that has not a red line or a blue one for the dollars and
cents, or some such purpose.1

As is a man’s intellectual character, is not such his
physical after all? Can you not infer from knowing
the intellectual characters of two which is most tena¬
cious of fife, which would die the hardest and will five
the longest, which is the toughest, which has most brute
strength, which the most passive endurance ? Methinks
I could to some extent infer these things.

1 p. m. — Round Flint’s Pond via railroad, my old
field. Goose Pond, Wharf Rock, Cedar Hill, Smith’s,
and so back.

Bigelow, speaking of the spikes of the blue vervain
( Verbena hastata), says, “The flowering commences
at their base and is long in reaching their summit.”
I perceive that only one circle of buds, about half a
dozen, blossoms at a time, — and there are about thirty
circles in the space of three inches, — while the next
circle of buds above at the same time shows the blue.
Thus this triumphant blossoming circle travels upward,
driving the remaining buds off into space.2 I think it
was the 16th of July when I first noticed them (on
another plant), and now they are all within about half
an inch of the top of the spikes. Yet the blossoms have
got no nearer the top on long [sic] spikes, which had
many buds, than on short ones only an inch long. Per-
1 [Charming, pp. 85, 86.] * [Charming, p. 214.]

1851] FLOWERING OF THE VERVAIN 415

haps the blossoming commenced enough earlier on the
long ones to make up for the difference in length. It is
very pleasant to measure the progress of the season by
this and similar clocks. So you get, not the absolute
time, but the true time of the season.1 But I can mea¬
sure the progress of the seasons only by observing a
particular plant, for I notice that they are by no means
equally advanced.

The prevailing conspicuous flowers at present are:
The early goldenrods, tansy, the life-everlastings, flea-
bane (though not for its flower), yarrow (rather dry),
hardhack and meadow-sweet (both getting dry, also
mayweed), Eupatorium purpureum, scabish, clethra
(really a fine, sweet-scented, and this year particularly
fair and fresh, flower, some unexpanded buds at top
tinged with red), Rhexia Virginica, thoroughwort, Poly-
gala sanguined, prunella, and dog’s-bane (getting stale),
etc., etc. Touch-me-not (less observed), Canada snap¬
dragon by roadside (not conspicuous). The purple
gerardia now, horsemint, or Mentha borealis , Veronica
scutellata (marsh speedwell). Ranunculus acris (tall crow¬
foot) still. Mowing to some extent improves the land¬
scape to the eye of the walker. The aftermath, so fresh
and green, begins now to recall the spring to my mind.
In some fields fresh clover heads appear. This is cer¬
tainly better than fields of lodged and withered grass. I
find ground-nuts by the railroad causeway three quarters
of an inch long by a third of an inch. The epilobium
still. Cow-wheat ( Melampyrum Americanum) still flour¬
ishes as much if not more than ever, and, shrubby-
1 [Charming, p. 214.]

416 JOURNAL [Aug. 21

looking, helps cover the ground where the wood has
recently been cut off, like huckleberry bushes.

There is some advantage, intellectually and spirit¬
ually, in taking wide views with the bodily eye and not
pursuing an occupation which holds the body prone.
There is some advantage, perhaps, in attending to the
general features of the landscape over studying the
particular plants and animals which inhabit it. A man
may walk abroad and no more see the sky than if he
walked under a shed. The poet is more in the air than
the naturalist, though they may walk side by side.
Granted that you are out-of-doors; but what if the
outer door is open, if the inner door is shut ! You must
walk sometimes perfectly free, not prying nor inquisi¬
tive, not bent upon seeing things. Throw away a whole
day for a single expansion, a single inspiration of air.

Any anomaly in vegetation makes Nature seem more
real and present in her working, as the various red and
yellow excrescences on young oaks. I am affected as
if it were a different Nature that produced them. As if
a poet were bom who had designs in his head.1

It is remarkable that animals are often obviously,
manifestly, related to the plants which they feed upon
or live among, — as caterpillars, butterflies, tree-toads,
partridges, chewinks, — and this afternoon I noticed
a yellow spider on a goldenrod; as if every condition
might have its expression in some form of animated
being.2

Spear-leaved goldenrod in path to northeast of Flint’s
Pond. Hwracium paniculatum , a very delicate and
1 [Charming, p. 74.] 2 [Charming, p. 215.]

1851] THE VISIT TO CANADA 417

slender hawkweed. I have now found all the hawkweeds.
Singular these genera of plants, plants manifestly re¬
lated yet distinct. They suggest a history to nature, a
natural history in a new sense.1

At Wharf Rock found water lobelia in blossom. I
saw some smilax vines in the swamp, which were con¬
nected with trees ten feet above the ground whereon
they grew and four or five feet above the surrounding
bushes. This slender vine, which cannot stand erect,
how did it establish that connection? Have the trees
and shrubs by which it once climbed been cut down ?
Or perchance do the young and flexible shoots blow
up in high winds and fix themselves ? 2 On Cedar Hill,
south side pond, I still hear the locust, though it has
been so much colder for the last week. It is quite hazy
in the west, though comparatively clear in other direc¬
tions. The barberiy bushes, with their drooping wreaths
of fruit now turning red, bushed up with some other
shrub or tree.

Aug. 22. I found last winter that it was expected by
my townsmen that I would give some account of Canada
because I had visited it, and because many of them had,
and so felt interested in the subject, — visited it as the
bullet visits the wall at which it is fired, and from which
it rebounds as quickly, and flattened (somewhat dam¬
aged, perchance) ! Yes, a certain man contracted to take
fifteen hundred live Yankees through Canada, at a cer¬
tain rate and within a certain time. It did not matter
to him what the commodity was, if only it would pack
1 [Channing, p. 74.] 2 [Channing, p. 214.]

418

JOURNAL

[Aug. 22

well and were delivered to him according to agreement
at the right place and time and rightly ticketed, so
much in bulk, wet or dry, on deck or in the hold, at the
option of the carrier how to stow the cargo and not al¬
ways right side up. In the meanwhile, it was understood
that the freight was not to be willfully and intentionally
debarred from seeing the country if it had eyes. It was
understood that there would be a country to be seen on
either side, though that was a secret advantage which
the contractors seemed not to be aware of. I fear that I
have not got much to say, not having seen much, for the
very rapidity of the motion had a tendency to keep my
eyelids closed. What I got by going to Canada was a
cold, and not till I get a fever, which I never had, shall
I know how to appreciate it.1

It is the fault of some excellent writers — De Quin-
cey’s first impressions on seeing London suggest it to
me — that they express themselves with too great full¬
ness and detail. They give the most faithful, natural,
and lifelike account of their sensations, mental and
physical, but they lack moderation and sententiousness.
They do not affect us by an ineffectual earnestness and
a reserve of meaning, like a stutterer; they say all they
mean. Their sentences are not concentrated and nutty.
Sentences which suggest far more than they say, which
have an atmosphere about them, which do not merely
report an old, but make a new, impression; sentences
which suggest as many things and are as durable as a
Roman aqueduct; to frame these, that is the art of
writing. Sentences which are expensive, towards which
1 [Excursions, p. 3; Riv. 3.]

419

1851] DE QUINCEY’S STYLE

so many volumes, so much life, went; which lie like
boulders on the page, up and down or across; which
contain the seed of other sentences, not mere repetition,
but creation; which a man might sell his grounds and
castles to build. If De Quincey had suggested each of
his pages in a sentence and passed on, it would have
been far more excellent writing. His style is nowhere
kinked and knotted up into something hard and sig¬
nificant, which you could swallow like a diamond, with¬
out digesting.1

Aug. 23. Saturday. To Walden to bathe at 5.30
A. m. Traces of the heavy rains in the night. The sand
and gravel are beaten hard by them. Three or four
showers in succession. But the grass is not so wet as
after an ordinary dew. The Verbena hastata at the pond
has reached the top of its spike, a little in advance of
what I noticed yesterday; only one or two flowers are
adhering. At the commencement of my walk I saw no
traces of fog, but after detected fogs over particular
meadows and high up some brooks’ valleys, and far
in the Deep Cut the wood fog. First muskmelon this
morning.

I rarely pass the shanty in the woods, where human
beings are lodged, literally, no better than pigs in a sty,
— little children, a grown man and his wife, and an
aged grandmother living this squalid life, squatting on
the ground, — but I wonder if it can be indeed true
that little Julia Riordan calls this place home, comes
here to rest at night and for her daily food, — in whom
1 [Channing, pp. 229, 230.]

420

JOURNAL

[Aug. 23

ladies and gentlemen in the village take an interest.
Of what significance are charity and almshouses ? That
there they five unmolested! in one sense so many de¬
grees below the almshouse! beneath charity! It is
admirable, — Nature against almshouses. A certain
wealth of nature, not poverty, it suggests. Not to identify
health and contentment, aye, and independence, with
the possession of this world’s goods! It is not wise to
waste compassion on them.

As I go through the Deep Cut, I hear one or two early
humblebees, come out on the damp sandy bank, whose
low hum sounds like distant horns from far in the hori¬
zon over the woods. It was long before I detected the
bees that made it, so far away and musical it sounded,
like the shepherds in some distant eastern vale greeting
the king of day.1

The farmers now carry — those who have got them
— their early potatoes and onions to market, starting
away early in the morning or at midnight. I see them
returning in the afternoon with the empty barrels.

Perchance the copious rain of last night will trouble
those who had not been so provident as to get their hay
from the Great Meadows, where it is often lost.

P. M. — Walk to Annursnack and back over stone
bridge.

I sometimes reproach myself because I do not find
anything attractive in certain mere trivial employments
of men, — that I skip men so commonly, and their
affairs, — the professions and the trades, — do not
1 [Channing, p. 77.]

1851] MEN OBSERVED AS ANIMALS 421

elevate them at least in my thought and get some ma¬
terial for poetry out of them directly. I will not avoid,
then, to go by where these men are repairing the stone
bridge, — see if I cannot see poetry in that, if that will
not yield me a reflection. It is narrow to be confined to
woods and fields and grand aspects of nature only. The
greatest and wisest will still be related to men. Why not
see men standing in the sun and casting a shadow, even
as trees ? May not some light be reflected from them as
from the stems of trees ? I will try to enjoy them as ani¬
mals, at least. They are perhaps better animals than
men. Do not neglect to speak of men’s low life and
affairs with sympathy, though you ever so speak as to
suggest a contrast between them and the ideal and
divine. You may be excused if you are always pathetic,
but do not refuse to recognize.

Resolve to read no book, to take no walk, to under¬
take no enterprise, but such as you can endure to give
an account of to yourself. Live thus deliberately for the
most part.

When I stopped to gather some blueberries by the
roadside this afternoon, I heard the shrilling of a cricket
or a grasshopper close to me, quite clear, almost like a
bell, a stridulous sound, a clear ring, incessant, not
intermittent, like the song of the black fellow I caught
the other day, and not suggesting the night, but belong¬
ing to day. It was long before I could find him, though
all the while within a foot or two. I did not know whether
to search amid the grass and stones or amid the leaves.
At last, by accident I saw him, he shrilling all the while
under an alder leaf two feet from the ground, — a

422

JOURNAL

[Aug. 23

slender green fellow with long feelers and transparent
wings. When he shrilled, his wings, which opened on
each other in the form of a heart perpendicularly to his
body like the wings of fairies, vibrated swiftly on each
other. The apparently wingless female, as I thought,
was near.

We experience pleasure when an elevated field or even
road in which we may be walking holds its level toward
the horizon at a tangent to the earth, is not convex with
the earth’s surface, but an absolute level.

On or under east side of Annursnack, Epilobium
coloratura, colored willow-herb, near the spring. Also
Polygonum sagittatum, scratch-grass.

The Price Farm road, one of those everlasting roads
which the sun delights to shine along in an August after¬
noon, playing truant; which seem to stretch themselves
with terrene jest as the weary traveller journeys on;
where there are three white sandy furrows ( liroe ), two for
the wheels and one between them for the horse, with
endless green grass borders between and room on each
side for huckleberries and birches; where the walls
indulge in freaks, not always parallel to the ruts, and
goldenrod yellows all the path; which some elms began
to border and shade once, but left off in despair, it was
so long; from no point on which can you be said to be
at any definite distance from a town.

I associate the beauty of Quebec with the steel-like
and flashing air.1

Our little river reaches are not to be forgotten. I
noticed that seen northward on the Assabet from the
1 [Excursions, p. 88; Riv. 109.]

SNAKE AND TOAD

423

1851]

Causeway Bridge near the second stone bridge. There
was [a] man in a boat in the sun, just disappearing in the
distance round a bend, lifting high his arms and dipping
his paddle as if he were a vision bound to land of the
blessed, — far off, as in picture. When I see Concord
to purpose, I see it as if it were not real but painted, and
what wonder if I do not speak to thee ? I saw a snake by
the roadside and touched him with my foot to see if he
were alive. He had a toad in his jaws, which he was pre¬
paring to swallow with his jaws distended to three times
his width, but he relinquished his prey in haste and fled;
and I thought, as the toad jumped leisurely away with
his slime-covered hind-quarters glistening in the sun, as
if I, his deliverer, wished to interrupt his meditations,
— without a shriek or fainting, — I thought what a
healthy indifference he manifested. Is not this the broad
earth still ? he said.1

Aug. 24. Mollugo verticillata, carpet-weed, flat,
whorl-leaved weed in gardens, with small white flowers.
Portulaca oleraeea , purslane, with its yellow blossoms.
Chelone glabra. I have seen the small mulleins as big
as a ninepence in the fields for a day or two.2

The weather is warmer again after a week or more of
cool days. There is greater average warmth, but not
such intolerable heats as in July. The nights especially
are more equably warm now, even when the day has
been comparatively rather cool. There are few days
now, fewer than in July, when you cannot lie at your
length on the grass. You have now forgotten winter

1 [Charming, pp. 287, 288.]

2 [The word “ mulleins ” is queried in pencil.]

JOURNAL

424

[Aug. 24

and its fashions, and have learned new summer fashions.
Your life may be out-of-doors now mainly.

Rattlesnake grass is ripe. The pods of the Asclepias

up pointedly like slender vases
an open salver truly ! Those
Syriaca hang down. The in-

pulchra stand
on a salver, —
of the A sclepias I

terregnum in the blossoming of flowers being well
over, many small flowers blossom now in the low
grounds, having just reached their summer. It is now
dry enough, and they feel the heat their tenderness re¬
quired. The autumnal flowers, — goldenrods, asters,
and johnswort, — though they have made demonstra¬
tions, have not yet commenced to reign. The tansy is
already getting stale ; it is perhaps the first conspicuous
yellow flower that passes from the stage.1

In Hubbard’s Swamp, where the blueberries, dangle-
berries, and especially the pyrus or choke-berries were
so abundant last summer, there is now perhaps not one
(unless a blueberry) to be found. Where the choke-
berries held on all last winter, the black and the red.

The common skullcap ( Scutellaria galericulata), quite
a handsome and middling-large blue flower. Lobelia
pallida still. Pointed cleavers or clivers {Galium asprel-
lum). Is that the naked viburnum, so common, with its
white, red, then purple berries, in Hubbard’s meadow ? 2

Did I find the dwarf tree-primrose in Hubbard’s
meadow to-day ? Stachys aspera , hedge-nettle or wound¬
wort, a rather handsome purplish flower. The capsules
of the Iris versicolor , or blue flag, are now ready for
humming [ ?]. Elderberries are ripe.

1 [Channing, p. 215.] * Yes.

AN AUGUST WIND

425

1851]

Aug. 25. Monday. What the little regular, rounded,
light-blue flower in Heywood Brook which I make
Class V, Order 1 ? Also the small purplish flower grow¬
ing on the mud in Hubbard’s meadow, perchance
C. XIV, with one pistil ? What the bean vine in the gar¬
den, Class VIII, Order 1 ? I do not find the name of
the large white polygonum of the river. Was it the fili¬
form ranunculus which I found on Hubbard’s shore ?
Hypericum Virginicumy mixed yellow and purple. The
black rough fruit of the skunk-cabbage, though green
within, barely rising above the level of the ground; you
see where it has been cut in two by the mowers in the
meadows. Polygonum amphibium , red, in river. Lysi-
machia hybrida still. Checkerberry in bloom. Blue¬
eyed grass still. Rhus copallina , mountain or dwarf
sumach. I now know all of the Rhus genus in Bigelow.
We have all but the staghorn in Concord. What a miser¬
able name has the Gratiola aurea , hedge hyssop ! Whose
hedge does it grow by, pray, in this part of the world ? 1

Aug. 26. A cool and even piercing wind blows to-day,
making all shrubs to bow and trees to wave; such as
we could not have had in July. I speak not of its cool¬
ness but its strength and steadiness. The wind and the
coldness increased as the day advanced, and finally the
wind went down with the sun. I was compelled to put
on an extra coat for my walk. The ground is strewn
with windfalls, and much fruit will consequently be lost.

The wind roars amid the pines like the surf. You can
hardly hear the crickets for the din, or the cars. I think
1 [Charming, p. 215.]

426

JOURNAL

[Aug. 26

the last must be considerably delayed when their course
is against it. Indeed it is difficult to enjoy a quiet
thought. You sympathize too much with the commo¬
tion and restlessness of the elements. Such a blowing,
stirring, bustling day, — what does it mean ? All light
things decamp; straws and loose leaves change their
places. Such a blowing day is no doubt indispensable
in the economy of nature. The whole country is a sea¬
shore, and the wind is the surf that breaks on it. It
shows the white and silvery under sides of the leaves.
Do plants and trees need to be thus tried and twisted ?
Is it a first intimation to the sap to cease to ascend, to
thicken their stems ? The Gerardia pedicularia , bushy
gerardia, I find on the White Pond road.

I perceive that some farmers are cutting turf now.
They require the driest season of the year. There is
something agreeable to my thoughts in thus burning a
part of the earth, the stock of fuel is so inexhaustible.
Nature looks not mean and niggardly, but like an ample
loaf. Is not he a rich man who owns a peat meadow ?
It is to enjoy the luxury of wealth. It must be a luxury
to sit around the fire in winter days and nights and bum
these dry slices of the meadow which contain roots of
all herbs. You dry and burn the very earth itself. It is
a fact kindred with salt-licks. The meadow is strewn
with the fresh bars, bearing the marks of the fork, and
the turf-cutter is wheeling them out with his barrow.
To sit and see the world aglow and try to imagine how
it would seem to have it so destroyed !

Woodchucks are seen tumbling into their holes on
all sides.

BURNING BRUSH

427

1851]

Aug. 27. I see the volumes of smoke — not quite
the blaze — from burning brush, as I suppose, far in
the western horizon. I believe it is at this season of the
year chiefly that you see this sight. It is always a ques¬
tion with some whether it is not a fire in the woods, or
some building. It is an interesting feature in the scenery
at this season. The farmer’s simple enterprises.

The vervain which I examined by the railroad the
other day has still a quarter of an inch to the top of its
spikes. Hawkweed groundsel (Senecio hieracifolius)
(fireweed). Rubus sempervirens , evergreen raspberry,
the small low blackberry, is now in fruit. The Medeola
Virginica, cucumber-root, the whorl-leaved plant, is
now in green fruit. Polygala cruciata, cross-leaved poly¬
gala, in the meadow between Trillium Woods and
railroad. This is rare and new to me. It has a veiy
sweet, but as it were intermittent, fragrance, as of
checkerberry and mayflowers combined. The hand¬
some calyx-leaves.1

Aug. 28. The pretty little blue flower in the Hey-
wood Brook, Class V, Order 1. Corolla about one sixth
of an inch in diameter, with five rounded segments;
stamens and pistil shorter than corolla; calyx with five
acute segments and acute sinuses; leaves not opposite,
lanceolate, spatulate, blunt, somewhat hairy on upper
side with a midrib only, sessile; flowers in a loose
raceme on rather long pedicels. Whole plant decum¬
bent, curving upward. Wet ground. Said to be like the
forget-me-not.

1 [Channing, p. 216.]

428

JOURNAL

[Aug. 28

Raphanus Raphanistrum, or wild radish, in meadows.

I find three or four ordinary laborers to-day putting
up the necessary outdoor fixtures for a magnetic tele¬
graph from Boston to Burlington. They carry along
a basket full of simple implements, like travelling
tinkers, and, with a little rude soldering, and twisting,
and straightening of wires, the work is done. It is a
work which seems to admit of the greatest latitude of
ignorance and bungling, and as if you might set your
hired man with the poorest head and hands to building
a magnetic telegraph. All great inventions stoop thus
low to succeed, for the understanding is but little above
the feet. They preserve so low a tone; they are simple
almost to coarseness and commonplaceness. Some¬
body had told them what he wanted, and sent them
forth with a coil of wire to make a magnetic telegraph.
It seems not so wonderful an invention as a common
cart or a plow.

Evening. — A new moon visible in the east [sic\. How
unexpectedly it always appears! You easily lose it in
the sky. The whip-poor-will sings, but not so com¬
monly as in spring. The bats are active.

The poet is a man who lives at last by watching his
moods. An old poet comes at last to watch his moods
as narrowly as a cat does a mouse.

I omit the unusual — the hurricanes and earthquakes
— and describe the common. This has the greatest
charm and is the true theme of poetry. You may have
the extraordinary for your province, if you will let me
have the ordinary. Give me the obscure life, the cot-

1851] THE FORTRESS OF QUEBEC 429

tage of the poor and humble, the workdays of the world,
the barren fields, the smallest share of all things but
poetic perception. Give me but the eyes to see the
things which you possess.1

Aug. 29. Though it is early, my neighbor’s hens
have strayed far into the fog toward the river. I find a
wasp in my window, which already appears to be taking
refuge from winter and unspeakable fate.

Those who first built it, coming from old France,
with the memory and tradition of feudal days and cus¬
toms weighing on them, were unquestionably behind
their age, and those who now inhabit it and repair it
are behind their ancestors. It is as if the inhabitants
of Boston should go down to Fort Independence, or
the inhabitants of New York should go over to Castle
William, to live. I rubbed my eyes to be sure that I was
in the Nineteenth Century. That would be a good
place to read Froissart’s Chronicles, I thought. It is a
specimen of the Old World in the New. It is such
a reminiscence of the Middle Ages as one of Scott’s
novels. Those old chevaliers thought they could trans¬
plant the feudal system to America. It has been set
out, but it has not thriven.2

Might I not walk a little further, till I hear new
crickets, till their creak has acquired some novelty, as
if they were a new species whose habitat I had reached ? 3

The air is filled with mist, yet a transparent mist, a
principle in it you might call flavor, which ripens fruits.

1 [Charming, p. 87.] 8 [Excursions, p. 81; Riv. 100, 101.]

8 [Charming, p. 70.]

430 JOURNAL [Aug. 29

This haziness seems to confine and concentrate the
sunlight, as if you lived in a halo. It is August.

A flock of forty-four young turkeys with their old
[sic], half a mile from a house on Conantum by the
river, the old faintly gobbling, the half-grown young
peeping. Turkey-men !

Gerardia glauca (< quercifolia , says one), tall gerardia,
one flower only left; also Corydalis glauca.

Aug. 30. Saturday. I perceive in the Norway cinque¬
foil ( Potentilla Norvegica), now nearly out of blossom,
that the alternate five leaves of the calyx are clos¬
ing over the seeds to protect them. This evidence of
forethought, this simple reflection in a double sense
of the term, in this flower, is affecting to me, as if it
said to me: “Even I am doing my appointed work in
this world faithfully. Not even do I, however obscurely
I may grow among the other loftier and more famous
plants, shirk my work, humble weed as I am. Not even
when I have blossomed, and have lost my painted petals
and am preparing to die down to my root, do I forget
to fall with my arms around my babe, faithful to the
last, that the infant may be found preserved in the
arms of the frozen mother.” That thus all the Norway
cinquefoils in the world had curled back their calyx
leaves, their warm cloaks, when now their flowering
season was past, over their progeny, from the time they
were created! There is one door closed, of the closing
year. Nature ordered this bending back of the calyx
leaves, and every year since this plant was created her
order has been faithfully obeyed, and this plant acts

A FAITHFUL FLOWER

431

1851]

not an obscure, but essential, part in the revolution of
the seasons. I am not ashamed to be contemporary
with the Norway cinquefoil. May I perform my part as
well! 1 There is so much done toward closing up the
year’s accounts. It is as good as if I saw the great globe
go round. It is as if I saw the Janus doors of the year
closing. The fall of each humblest flower marks the
annual period of some phase of human life, experience.
I can be said to note the flower’s fall only when I see
in it the symbol of my own change. When I experience
this, then the flower appears to me.

Drosera rotundijolia in Moore’s new field ditch.
The Viola pedata and the houstonia now. What is the
peculiarity of these flowers that they blossom again?
Is it merely because they blossomed so early in the
spring, and now are ready for a new spring? They
impress me as so much more native or naturalized
here.

We love to see Nature fruitful in whatever kind.
It assures us of her vigor and that she may equally
bring forth the fruits which we prize. I love to see the
acorns plenty, even on the shrub oaks, aye, and the
nightshade berries. I love to see the potato balls numer¬
ous and large, as I go through a low field, poisonous
though they look, the plant thus, as it were, bearing
fruit at both ends, saying ever and anon, “Not only
these tubers I offer you for the present, but if you will
have new varieties, — if these do not satisfy you, —
plant these seeds.” 2 What abundance ! what luxuri¬
ance! what bounty! The potato balls, which are worth-
1 [Charming, p. 74.] 2 [Channing, pp. 74, 215.]

432

JOURNAL

[Aug. 30

less to the farmer, combine to make the general impres¬
sion of the year’s fruitfulness. It is as cheering to me
as the rapid increase of the population of New York.

Aug. 31. Proserpinaca palustris, spear-leaved pro-
serpinaca, mermaid-weed. (This in Hubbard’s Grove
on my way to Conantum.) A hornets’ (?) nest in a
rather tall huckleberry bush, the stems projecting
through it, the leaves spreading over it. How these
fellows avail themselves of the vegetables! They kept
arriving, the great fellows, but I never saw whence they
came, but only heard the buzz just at the entrance.
(With whitish abdomens.) At length, after I have
stood before the nest five minutes, during which time
they had taken no notice of me, two seemed to be con¬
sulting at the entrance, and then one made a threaten¬
ing dash at me and returned to the nest. I took the hint
and retired. They spoke as plainly as man could have
done.1

I see that the farmers have begun to top their corn.

Examined my old friend the green locust ( ?), shrilling
on an alder leaf.

What relation does the fall dandelion bear to the
spring dandelion ? There is a rank scent of tansy now
on some roads, disagreeable to many people from be¬
ing associated in their minds with funerals, where it is
sometimes put into the coffin and about the corpse. I
have not observed much St. John’s-wort yet. Galium
triforum, three-flowered cleavers, in Conant’s Spring
Swamp; also fever-bush there, now budded for next
1 [Channing, p. 249.]

POTATO BALLS

433

1851]

year. Tobacco-pipe ( Monotropa uniflora) in Spring
Swamp Path. I came out of the thick, dark, swampy
wood as from night into day. Having forgotten the
daylight, I was surprised to see how bright it was. I
had light enough, methought, and here was an afternoon
sun illumining all the landscape. It was a surprise to
me to see how much brighter an ordinary afternoon is
than the light which penetrates a thick wood.

One of these drooping clusters of potato balls would
be as good a symbol, emblem, of the year’s fertility
as anything, — better surely than a bunch of grapes.
Fruit of the strong soil, containing potash (?). The
vintage is come; the olive is ripe.

“I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude;

And with forc’d fingers rude.

Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year;”

Why not for my coat-of-arms, for device, a drooping
cluster of potato balls, — in a potato field ? 1

What right has a New England poet to sing of wine,
who never saw a vineyard, who obtains his liquor from
the grocer, who would not dare, if he could, tell him what
it is composed of. A Yankee singing in praise of wine!
It is not sour grapes in this case, it is sweet grapes;
the more inaccessible they are the sweeter they are. It
seemed to me that the year had nothing so much to
brag of as these potato balls. Do they not concern New-
Englanders a thousand times more than all her grapes ?
In Moore’s new field they grow, cultivated with the bog
hoe, manured with ashes and sphagnum. How they
take to the virgin soil ! 2 Shannon tells me that he took
1 [Channing, pp. 75, 216.] 2 [Charming, p. 216.]

434

JOURNAL

[Aug. 31

a piece of bog land of Augustus Hayden, cleared,
turned up the stumps and roots and burned it over, mak¬
ing a coat of ashes six inches deep, then planted pota¬
toes. He never put a hoe to it till he went to dig them;
then between 8 o’clock a. m. and 5 p. m. he and another
man dug and housed seventy-five bushels apiece! !

Cohush now in fruit, ivory-white berries tipped now
with black on stout red pedicels, — Actcea alba. Col-
linsonia Canadensis , horseweed. I had discovered this
singular flower there new to me, and, having a botany
by me, looked it out. What a surprise and disappoint¬
ment, what an insult and impertinence to my curiosity
and expectation, to have given me the name “horse-
weed ! ”

Cohush Swamp is about twenty rods by three or four.
Among rarer plants it contains the basswood, the black
(as well as white) ash, the fever-bush, the cohush, the
collinsonia, not to mention sassafras, poison sumach,
ivy, agrimony. Arum triphyllum, (sweet viburnum ( ?)
in hedges near by), ground-nut, touch-me-not (as high
as your head), and Eupatorium purpureum (eight feet,
eight inches high, with a large convex corymb (hemi¬
spherical) of many stories, fourteen inches wide; width
of plant from tip of leaf to tip of leaf two feet, diameter
of stalk one inch at ground, leaves seven in a whorl).
Rare plants seem to love certain localities. As if the
original Conant had been a botanist and endeavored
to form an arboretum. A natural arboretum ?

The handsome sweet viburnum berries, now red on
one cheek.

It was the filiform crowfoot (Ranunculus filiformis)

435

1851] THE SEAL OF EVENING

that I saw by the riverside the other day and to-day.
The season advances apace. The flowers of the nettle¬
leaved vervain are now near the1 ends of the spike, like
the blue. Utricularia inflata, whorled bladderwort,
floating on the water at same place. Gentiana Sapona -
ria budded. Gerardia flava at Conant’s Grove.

Half an hour before sunset I was at Tupelo Cliff,
when, looking up from my botanizing (I had been
examining the Ranunculus fUiformis , the Slum lati-
folium (? ?), and the obtuse galium on the muddy
shore), I saw the seal of evening on the river. There
was a quiet beauty in the landscape at that hour which
my senses were prepared to appreciate. The sun going
down on the west side, that hand being already in shadow
for the most part, but his rays lighting up the water and
the willows and pads even more than before. His rays
then fell at right angles on their stems. I sitting on the
old brown geologic rocks, their feet submerged and
covered with weedy moss (utricularia roots?). Some¬
times their tops are submerged. The cardinal-flowers
standing by me. The trivialness of the day is past. The
greater stillness, the serenity of the air, its coolness and
transparency, the mistiness being condensed, are favor¬
able to thought. (The pensive eve.) The coolness of
evening comes to condense the haze of noon and make
the air transparent and the outline of objects firm and
distinct, and chaste (chaste eve); even as I am made
more vigorous by my bath, am more continent of thought.
After bathing, even at noonday, a man realizes a morn¬
ing or evening life.1 The evening air is such a bath
1 [Charming, pp. 301, 302.]

436

JOURNAL

[Aug. 31

for both mind and body. When I have walked all day
in vain under the torrid sun, and the world has been all
trivial, — as well field and wood as highway, — then
at eve the sun goes down westward, and the wind goes
down with it, and the dews begin to purify the air and
make it transparent, and the lakes and rivers acquire
a glassy stillness, reflecting the skies, the reflex of the
day. I too am at the top of my condition for perceiving
beauty. Thus, long after feeding, the diviner faculties
begin to be fed, to feel their oats, their nutriment, and
are not oppressed by the belly’s load. It is abstinence
from loading the belly anew until the brain and divine
faculties have felt their vigor. Not till some hours does
my food invigorate my brain, — ascendeth into the brain.
We practice at this hour an involuntary abstinence.
We are comparatively chaste and temperate as Eve
herself ; the nutriment is just reaching the brain. Every
sound is music now. The grating of some distant boat
which a man is launching on the rocky bottom, —
though here is no man nor inhabited house, nor even
cultivated field, in sight, — this is heard with such dis¬
tinctness that I listen with pleasure as if it was [sic]
music. The attractive point is that line where the water
meets the land, not distinct, but known to exist. The
willows are not the less interesting because of their
nakedness below. How rich, like what we love to read
of South American primitive forests, is the scenery of
this river ! What luxuriance of weeds, what depth of mud
along its sides! These old antehistoric, geologic, ante¬
diluvian rocks, which only primitive wading birds, still
lingering among us, are worthy to tread. The season

437

1851] SOLITUDE IN CONCORD

which we seem to live in anticipation of is arrived. The
water, indeed, reflects heaven because my mind does;
such is its own serenity, its transparency and stillness.

With what sober joy I stand to let the water drip from
me and feel my fresh vigor, who have been bathing in
the same tub which the muskrat uses ! Such a medicated
bath as only nature furnishes. A fish leaps, and the
dimple he makes is observed now. How ample and
generous was nature! My inheritance is not narrow.1
Here is no other this evening. Those resorts which I
most love and frequent, numerous and vast as they are,
are as it were given up to me, as much as if I were
an autocrat or owner of the world, and by my edicts
excluded men from my territories. Perchance there is
some advantage here not enjoyed in older countries.
There are said to be two thousand inhabitants in Con¬
cord, and yet I find such ample space and verge, even
miles of walking every day in which I do not meet nor
see a human being, and often not very recent traces of
them. So much of man as there is in your mind, there
will be in your eye. Methinks that for a great part of the
time, as much as it is possible, I walk as one possessing
the advantages of human culture, fresh from society of
men, but turned loose into the woods, the only man in
nature, walking and meditating to a great extent as if
man and his customs and institutions were not. The
catbird, or the jay, is sure of the whole of your ear now.
Each noise is like a stain on pure glass. The rivers now,
these great blue subterranean heavens, reflecting the
supernal skies and red-tinted clouds.

1 [Charming, p. 301.]

438

JOURNAL

[Aug. 31

A fly (or gnat ?) will often buzz round you and perse¬
cute you like an imp. How much of imp-like, pestering
character they express ! (I hear a boy driving home his
cows.) What unanimity between the water and the
sky! — one only a little denser element than the other.
The grossest part of heaven. Think of a mirror on so
large a scale! Standing on distant hills, you see the
heavens reflected, the evening sky, in some low lake or
river in the valley, as perfectly as in any mirror they
could be. Does it not prove how intimate heaven is with
earth?

We commonly sacrifice to supper this serene and
sacred hour. Our customs turn the hour of sunset to a
trivial time, as at the meeting of two roads, one coming
from the noon, the other leading to the night. It might
be [well] if our repasts were taken out-of-doors, in view
of the sunset and the rising stars; if there were two
persons whose pulses beat together, if men cared for
the Kooytos, or beauty of the world; if men were social
in a high and rare sense; if they associated on high
levels; if we took in with our tea a draught of the trans¬
parent, dew-freighted evening air; if, with our bread
and butter, we took a slice of the red western sky; if the
smoking, steaming urn were the vapor on a thousand
lakes and rivers and meads.

The air of the valleys at this hour is the distilled
essence of all those fragrances which during the day
have been filling and have been dispersed in the atmos¬
phere. The fine fragrances, perchance, which have
floated in the upper atmospheres have settled to these
low vales!

439

1851] THE NAMES OF PLANTS

I talked of buying Conantum once, but for want of
money we did not come to terms. But I have farmed it
in my own fashion every year since.

I have no objection to giving the names of some natu¬
ralists, men of flowers, to plants, if by their lives they
have identified themselves with them. There may be
a few Kalmias. But it must be done very sparingly, or,
rather, discriminatingly, and no man’s name be used
who has not been such a lover of flowers that the flowers
themselves may be supposed thus to reciprocate his
love.

VIII

SEPTEMBER, 1851
(MT. 34)

Sept. 1. Mikania scandens , with its purplish white
flowers, now covering the button-bushes and willows
by the side of the stream. Bidens chrysanthemoides,
large-flowered bidens, edge of river. Various-colored
polygonums standing high among the bushes and weeds
by riverside, — white and reddish and red.

Is not disease the rule of existence ? There is not a
lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by
insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, often¬
times esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be dis¬
tinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company,
misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer,
find me a perfect leaf or fruit.

The fruit of the trilliums is very handsome. I found
some a month ago, a singular red , angular-cased pulp,
drooping, with the old anthers surrounding it three
quarters of an inch in diameter; and now there is
another kind, a dense crowded cluster of many ovoid
berries turning from green to scarlet or bright brick-
color. Then there is the mottled fruit of the clustered
Solomon’s-seal, and also the greenish (with blue meat)
fruit of the Convcdlaria multiflora dangling from the
axils of the leaves.

1851] FINDING ONE’S FACULTIES 441

Sept. 2. The dense fog came into my chamber early
this morning, freighted with light, and woke me. It
was, no doubt, lighter at that hour than if there had
been no fog.

Not till after several months does an infant find its
hands, and it may be seen looking at them with aston¬
ishment, holding them up to the light; and so also it
finds its toes. How many faculties there are which we
have never found! 1 Some men, methinks, have found
only their hands and feet. At least I have seen some who
appeared never to have found their heads, but used
them only instinctively, as the negro who butts with his,2
or the water-carrier who makes a pack-horse of his.
They have but partially found their heads.

We cannot write well or truly but what we write
with gusto. The body, the senses, must conspire with
the mind. Expression is the act of the whole man, that
our speech may be vascular. The intellect is powerless
to express thought without the aid of the heart and
liver and of every member. Often I feel that my head
stands out too dry, when it should be immersed. A
writer, a man writing, is the scribe of all nature; he is
the com and the grass and the atmosphere writing. It
is always essential that we love to do what we are doing,
do it with a heart. The maturity of the mind, however,
may perchance consist with a certain dryness.

There are flowers of thought, and there are leaves
of thought; most of our thoughts are merely leaves, to
which the thread of thought is the stem.

What affinity is it brings the goldfinch to the sun-
1 [Charming, p. 203.] * [Channing, p. 86.]

442

JOURNAL

[Sept. 2

flower — both yellow — to pick its seeds ? Whatever
things I perceive with my entire man, those let me re¬
cord, and it will be poetry. The sounds which I hear
with the consent and coincidence of all my senses, these
are significant and musical; at least, they only are
heard.1

In a day or two the first message will be conveyed or
transmitted over the magnetic telegraph through this
town, as a thought traverses space, and no citizen of the
town shall be aware of it. The atmosphere is full of
telegraphs equally unobserved. We are not confined to
Morse’s or House’s or Bain’s line.

Raise some sunflowers to attract the goldfinches, to
feed them as well as your hens. What a broad and
loaded, bounteously filled platter of food is presented
this bon-vivant !

Here is one of those thick fogs which last well into
the day. While the farmer is concerned about the crops
which his fields bear, I will be concerned about the fer¬
tility of my human farm. I will watch the winds and the
rains as they affect the crop of thought, — the crop of
crops, ripe thoughts, which glow and rustle and fill the
air with fragrance for centuries. Is it a drought ? How
long since we had a rain? What is the state of the
springs ? Are the low springs high ?

I now begin to pluck wild apples.

The difference is not great between some fruits in
which the worm is always present and those gall fruits
which were produced by the insect.

Old Cato says well, “ Patremfamilias vendacem , non
1 [Charming, p. 87.]

MOOSE-LIPPED WORDS

443

1851]

emacem , esse oportet .” These Latin terminations express
better than any English that I know the greediness, as
it were, and tenacity of purpose with which the hus¬
bandman and householder is required to be a seller
and not a buyer, — with mastiff-like tenacity, — these
lipped words, which, like the lips of moose and browsing
creatures, gather in the herbage and twigs with a certain
greed. This termination cious adds force to a word,
like the lips of browsing creatures, which greedily col¬
lect what the jaw holds; as in the word “tenacious”
the first half represents the kind of jaw which holds, the
last the lips which collect. It can only be pronounced
by a certain opening and protruding of the lips; so
“avaricious.” These words express the sense of their
simple roots with the addition, as it were, of a certain
lip greediness. Hence “capacious” and “capacity,”
“ emacity.” When these expressive words are used, the
hearer gets something to chew upon. To be a seller with
the tenacity and firmness and steadiness of the jaws
which hold and the greediness of the lips which collect.
The audacious man not only dares, but he greedily
collects more danger to dare. The avaricious man not
only desires and satisfies his desire, but he collects ever
new browse in anticipation of his ever-springing desires.
What is luscious is especially enjoyed by the lips. The
mastiff-mouthed are tenacious. To be a seller with
mastiff-mouthed tenacity of purpose, with moose-lipped
greediness, — ability to browse ! To be edacious and
voracious is to be not nibbling and swallowing merely,
but eating and swallowing while the lips are greedily
collecting more food.

444

JOURNAL

[Sept. 2

There is a reptile in the throat of the greedy man
always thirsting and famishing. It is not his own natural
hunger and thirst which he satisfies.

The more we know about the ancients, the more we
find that they were like the modems. When I read
Marcus Cato De Re Rustica, a small treatise or Farmer’s
Manual of those days, fresh from the field of Roman
life, all reeking with and redolent of the life of those
days, containing more indirect history than any of the
histories of Rome of direct, — all of that time but that
time, — here is a simple, direct, pertinent word addressed
to the Romans. And where are the Romans? Rome
and the Romans are commonly a piece of rhetoric. As
if New England had disappeared poetically and there
were left Buel’s “ Farmer’s Companion,” or the letters of
Solon Robinson, or a volume of extracts from the New
England Farmer. Though the Romans are no more but
a fable and an ornament of rhetoric, we have here their
New England Farmer , the very manual those Roman
farmers read, speaking as if they were to hear it, its
voice not silenced, as if Rome were still the mistress
of the world, — as fresh as a dripping dish-cloth from
a Roman kitchen.1 As when you overhaul the corre¬
spondence of a man who died fifty years ago, with like
surprise and feelings you overhaul the manuscripts of the
Roman nation. There exist certain old papers, manu¬
scripts, either the originals or faithful and trustworthy
old copies of the originals, which were left by the Ro¬
man people. They have gone their way, but these old
papers of all sorts remain. Among them there are some
1 [Charming, pp. 60, 61.]

CATO’S DE RE RUSTIC A

445

1851]

farm journals, or farm books; just such a collection
of diary and memorandum — as when the cow calved,
and the dimensions, with a plan, of the barn, and how
much paid to Joe Farrar for work done on the farm,
etc., etc. — as you might find in an old farmer’s pocket-
book to-day.

Indeed the farmer’s was pretty much the same routine
then as now. Cato says : “ Sterquilinium magnum stude
ut habeas. Stercus sedulo conserva, cum exportabis
purgato et comminuito. Per autumnum evehito.”
(Study to have a great dungheap. Carefully preserve
your dung, when you carry it out, make clean work of
it and break it up fine. Carry it out during the autumn.)
Just such directions as you find in the “ Farmer’s Alma¬
nack ” to-day. It reminds me of what I see going on in
our fields every autumn. As if the farmers of Concord
were obeying Cato’s directions. And Cato but repeated
the maxims of a remote antiquity. Nothing can be more
homely and suggestive of the every-day fife of the Roman
agriculturalists, thus supplying the very deficiencies in
what is commonly called Roman history, i. e. reveal¬
ing to us the actual life of the Romans, the how they
got their living and what they did from day to day.1

They planted rapa, raphanos , milium , and panicum
in low foggy land, ager nebulosus.

I see the farmer now — i. e. I shall in autumn — on
every side carting out his manure and sedulously mak¬
ing his compost-heap, or scattering it over his grass
ground and breaking it up with a mallet; and it reminds
me of Cato’s advice. He died one hundred and fifty
1 [Charming, pp. 60, 61.]

446

JOURNAL

[Sept. 2

years before Christ.1 Before Christianity was heard of,
this was done.* A Roman family appears to have had a
great supply of tubs and kettles.

A fire in the sitting-room to-day. Walk in the after¬
noon by Walden road and railroad to Minn’s place, and
round it to railroad and home. The first coolness is
welcome, so serious and fertile of thought. My skin
contracts, and I become more continent. Carried
umbrellas, it mizzling. As in the night, now in the rain, I
smell the fragrance of the woods. The prunella leaves
have turned a delicate claret or lake color by the road¬
side. I am interested in these revolutions as much as in
those of kingdoms. Is there not tragedy enough in the
autumn ? Walden seems to be going down at last. The
pines are dead and leaning, red and half upset, about
its shore. Thus, by its rising once in twenty-five years,
perchance, it keeps an open shore, as if the ice had
heaved them over. Found the succory at Minn’s Bridge
on railroad and beyond. Query: May not this and the
tree-primrose and other plants be distributed from
Boston on the rays of the railroads, the seeds mixing
with the grains and all kinds of dirt and being blown
from the passing freight-cars? The feathery-tailed
fruit of the fertile flowers of the clematis conspicuous
now.

The shorn meadows looked of a living green as we
came home at eve, even greener than in spring. The
jaenum cordum , the aftermath, sicilimenta de proto, the
second mowings of the meadow, this reminds me of, in
Cato.2

1 [Charming, p. 60.] 2 [Charming, p. 220.]

THE HORSE AND MAN

447

1851]

Sept. 3. Why was there never a poem on the cricket ?
Its creak seems to me to be one of the most prominent
and obvious facts in the world, and the least heeded.
In the report of a man’s contemplations I look to see
somewhat answering to this sound.1 When I sat on
Lee’s Cliff the other day (August 29th), I saw a man
working with a horse in a field by the river, carting dirt;
and the horse and his relation to him struck me as very
remarkable. There was the horse, a mere animated
machine, — though his tail was brushing off the flies, —
his whole existence subordinated to the man’s, with no
tradition, perhaps no instinct, in him of independence
and freedom, of a time when he was wild and free, —
completely humanized. No compact made with him
that he should have the Saturday afternoons, or the
Sundays, or any holidays. His independence never
recognized, it being now quite forgotten both by men
and by horses that the horse was ever free. For I am
not aware that there are any wild horses known surely
not to be descended from tame ones. Assisting that man
to pull down that bank and spread it over the meadow;
only keeping off the flies with his tail, and stamping,
and catching a mouthful of grass or leaves from time
to time, on his own account, — all the rest for man.
It seemed hardly worth while that he should be ani¬
mated for this. It was plain that the man was not educat¬
ing the horse ; not trying to develop his nature, but merely
getting work out of him. That mass of animated matter
seemed more completely the servant of man than any
inanimate. For slaves have their holidays; a heaven
1 [Channing, p. 78.]

448

JOURNAL

[Sept. 3

is conceded to them, but to the horse none. Now and
forever he is man’s slave. The more I considered, the
more the man seemed akin to the horse; only his was
the stronger will of the two. For a little further on I saw
an Irishman shovelling, who evidently was as much
tamed as the horse. He had stipulated that to a certain
extent his independence be recognized, and yet really
he was but little more independent. I had always in¬
stinctively regarded the horse as a free people some¬
where, living wild. Whatever has not come under the
sway of man is wild. In this sense original and inde¬
pendent men are wild, — not tamed and broken by
society. Now for my part I have such a respect for the
horse’s nature as would tempt me to let him alone; not
to interfere with him, — his walks, his diet, his loves.
But by mankind he is treated simply as if he were an en¬
gine which must have rest and is sensible of pain. Sup¬
pose that every squirrel were made to turn a coffee-mill !
Suppose that the gazelles were made to draw milk-carts !

There he was with his tail cut off, because it was in
the way, or to suit the taste of his owner; his mane
trimmed, and his feet shod with iron that he might
wear longer. What is a horse but an animal that has
lost its liberty? Wkat is it but a system of slavery?
and do you not thus by insensible and unimportant de¬
grees come to human slavery? Has lost its liberty! —
and has man got any more liberty himself for having
robbed the horse, or has he lost just as much of his
own, and become more like the horse he has robbed?
Is not the other end of the bridle in this case, too, coiled
round his own neck? Hence stable-boys, jockeys, all

HEALTH AND DISEASE

449

1851]

that class that is daily transported by fast horses. There
he stood with his oblong square figure (his tail being
cut off) seen against the water, brushing off the flies
with his tail and stamping, braced back while the man
was filling the cart:1

It is a very remarkable and significant fact that,
though no man is quite well or healthy, yet every one
believes practically that health is the rule and disease the
exception, and each invalid is wont to think himself in
a minority, and to postpone somewhat of endeavor to
another state of existence. But it may be some encourage¬
ment to men to know that in this respect they stand on
the same platform, that disease is, in fact, the rule of
our terrestrial life and the prophecy of a celestial life.
Where is the coward who despairs because he is sick ?
Every one may live either the life of Achilles or of Nestor.
Seen in this light, our life with all its diseases will look
healthy, and in one sense the more healthy as it is the
more diseased. Disease is not the accident of the individ¬
ual, nor even of the generation, but of life itself. In some
form, and to some degree or other, it is one of the per¬
manent conditions of life. It is, nevertheless, a cheering
fact that men affirm health unanimously, and esteem
themselves miserable failures. Here was no blunder.
They gave us life on exactly these conditions, and me-
thinks we shall live it with more heart when we perceive
clearly that these are the terms on which we have it.
Life is a warfare, a struggle, and the diseases of the
body answer to the troubles and defeats of the spirit.
Man begins by quarrelling with the animal in him, and
1 [Channing, pp. 173-175.]

450

JOURNAL

[Sept. 3

the result is immediate disease. In proportion as the
spirit is the more ambitious and persevering, the more
obstacles it will meet with. It is as a seer that man as¬
serts his disease to be exceptional.1

2 p. m. — To Hubbard’s Swimming-Place and Grove
in rain.

As I went under the new telegraph-wire, I heard it
vibrating like a harp high overhead. It was as the
sound of a far-off glorious life, a supernal life, which
came down to us, and vibrated the lattice-work of this
life of ours.2

The melons and the apples seem at once to feed my
brain.

Here comes a laborer from his dinner to resume his
work at clearing out a ditch notwithstanding the rain,
remembering as Cato says, per ferias potuisse fossas
veteres tergeri , that in the holidays old ditches might
have been cleared out. One would think that I were
the paterfamilias come to see if the steward of my farm
has done his duty.

The ivy leaves are turning red. Fall dandelions
stand thick in the meadows.

How much the Roman must have been indebted to
his agriculture, dealing with the earth, its clods and
stubble, its dust and mire. Their farmer consuls were
their glory, and they well knew the farm to be the
nursery of soldiers. Read Cato to see what kind of legs
the Romans stood on.

The leaves of the hardhack are somewhat appressed,
1 [Chancing, p. 164.] 8 [Channing, p. 199.]

451

1851] WALKING IN ENGLAND

clothing the stem and showing their downy under sides
like white, waving wands. Is it peculiar to the season,
or the rain, — or the plant ?

Walk often in drizzly weather, for then the small
weeds (especially if they stand on bare ground), cov¬
ered with rain-drops like beads, appear more beautiful
than ever, — the hypericums, for instance. They are
equally beautiful when covered with dew, fresh and
adorned, almost spirited away, in a robe of dewdrops.1

Some farmers have begun to thresh and winnow their
oats.

Identified spotted spurge ( Euphorbia maculata ), ap¬
parently out of blossom. Shepherd’s-purse and chick-
weed.

As for walking, the inhabitants of large English towns
are confined almost exclusively to their parks and to
the highways. The few footpaths in their vicinities “ are
gradually vanishing,” says Wilkinson, “under the en¬
croachments of the proprietors.” He proposes that the
people’s right to them be asserted and defended and
that they be kept in a passable state at the public ex¬
pense. “ This,” says he, “ would be easily done by means
of asphalt laid upon a good foundation ” ! ! ! So much
for walking, and the prospects of walking, in the neigh¬
borhood of English large towns.

Think of a man — he may be a genius of some kind
— being confined to a highway and a park for his world
to range in ! I should die from mere nervousness at the
thought of such confinement. I should hesitate before
I were bom, if those terms could be made known to me
1 [Channing, p. 216.]

452

JOURNAL

[Sept. 3

beforehand. Fenced in forever by those green barriers
of fields, where gentlemen are seated ! Can they be said
to be inhabitants of this globe ? Will they be content to
inhabit heaven thus partially ?

Sept. 4. 8 a. m. — A clear and pleasant day after the
rain. Start for Boon’s Pond in Stow with C. Every
sight and sound was the more interesting for the clear
atmosphere. When you are starting away, leaving your
more familiar fields, for a little adventure like a walk,
you look at every object with a traveller’s, or at least
with historical, eyes; you pause on the first bridge,
where an ordinary walk hardly commences, and begin
to observe and moralize like a traveller. It is worth the
while to see your native village thus sometimes, as if you
were a traveller passing through it, commenting on your
neighbors as strangers.1 We stood thus on Wood’s
Bridge, the first bridge, in the capacity of pilgrims and
strangers to its familiarity, giving it one more chance
with us, though our townsmen who passed may not
have perceived it.

There was a pretty good-sized pickerel poised over
the sandy bottom close to the shore and motionless as a
shadow. It is wonderful how they resist the slight cur¬
rent of our river and remain thus stationary for hours.
He, no doubt, saw us plainly on the bridge, — in the
sunny water, his whole form distinct and his shadow,
— motionless as the steel trap which does not spring
till the fox’s foot has touched it.

- ’s dog sprang up, ran out, and growled at

1 [Charming, p. 222.]

18511 THE FARMER AND HIS OXEN 453

us, and in his eye I seemed to see the eye of his master.
I have no doubt but that, as is the master, such in
course of time tend to become his herds and flocks as
well as dogs. One man’s oxen will be clever and solid,
another’s mischievous, another’s mangy, — in each
case like their respective owners. No doubt man im¬
presses his own character on the beasts which he tames
and employs; they are not only humanized, but they
acquire his particular human nature.1 How much oxen
are like farmers generally, and cows like farmers’
wives! and young steers and heifers like farmers’ boys
and girls ! The farmer acts on the ox, and the ox reacts
on the farmer. They do not meet half-way, it is true,
but they do meet at a distance from the centre of each
proportionate to each one’s intellectual power.2 The
farmer is ox-like in his thought, in his walk, in his
strength, in his trustworthiness, in his taste.3

Hosmer’s man was cutting his millet, and his buck¬
wheat already lay in red piles in the field.

The first picture we noticed was where the road
turned among the pitch pines and showed the Hadley
house, with the high wooded hill behind with dew and
sun on it, the gracefully winding road path, and a more
distant horizon on the right of the house. Just beyond,
on the left, it was pleasant walking where the road was
shaded by a high hill, as it can be only in the morning.
Even in the morning that additional coolness and early-
dawn-like feeling of a more sacred and earlier season
are agreeable.

1 [Channing, p. 76.] 2 [Ibid.]

3 [Channing, p. 175.]

454

JOURNAL

[Sept. 4

The lane in front of TarbelFs house, which is but
little worn and appears to lead nowhere, though it has
so wide and all-engulfing an opening, suggested that
such things might be contrived for effect in laying out
grounds. (Only those things are sure to have the greatest
and best' effect, which like this were not contrived for
the sake of effect.) An open path which would sug¬
gest walking and adventuring on it, the going to some
place strange and far away. It would make you think
of or imagine distant places and spaces greater than
the estate.

It was pleasant, looking back just beyond, to see a
heavy shadow (made by some high birches) reaching
quite across the road. Light and shadow are sufficient
contrast and furnish sufficient excitement when we are
well.

Now we were passing the vale of Brown and Tarbell,
a sunshiny mead pastured by cattle and sparkling with
dew, the sound of crows and swallows heard in the air,
and leafy-columned elms seen here and there shining
with dew. The morning freshness and unworldliness
of that domain ! 1 The vale of Tempe and of Arcady
is not farther off than are the conscious lives of men
from their opportunities. Our life is as far from corre¬
sponding to its scenery as we are distant from Tempe
and Arcadia; that is to say, they are far away because
we are far from living natural lives. How absurd it would
be to insist on the vale of Tempe in particular when we
have such vales as we have!

In the Marlborough road, in the woods, I saw a pur-
1 [Charming, p. 222.]

455

1851] FOOTPATHS FOR POETS

pie streak like a stain on the red pine leaves and sand
under my feet, which I was surprised to find was made
by a dense mass of purple fleas, somewhat like snow-
fleas, — a faint purple stain as if some purple dye had
been spilt. What is that slender pink flower that I
find in the Marlborough road, — smaller than a snap¬
dragon ? The slender stems of grass which hang over
the ruts and horses’ path in this little-frequented road
are so laden with dew that I am compelled to hold a
bush before me to shake it off. The jays scream on
the right and left and are seen flying further off as we

go by.

We drink in the meadow at Second Division Brook,
then sit awhile to watch its yellowish pebbles and the
cress ( ?) in it and other weeds. The ripples cover its
surface like a network and are faithfully reflected on the
bottom. In some places, the sun reflected from ripples
on a flat stone looks like a golden comb. The whole
brook seems as busy as a loom : it is a woof and warp
of ripples; fairy fingers are throwing the shuttle at every
step, and the long, waving brook is the fine product.
The water is wonderfully clear.

To have a hut here, and a footpath to the brook! For
roads, I think that a poet cannot tolerate more than a
footpath through the fields; that is wide enough, and
for purposes of winged poesy suffices. It is not for the
muse to speak of cart-paths. I would fain travel by a
footpath round the world.1 I do not ask the railroads of
commerce, not even the cart-paths of the farmer. Pray,
what other path would you have than a footpath ? What
1 [Charming, p. 69.] •

456

JOURNAL

[Sept. 4

else should wear a path ? This is the track of man alone.
What more suggestive to the pensive walker ? 1 One
walks in a wheel-track with less emotion; he is at a
greater distance from man; but this footpath was,
perchance, worn by the bare feet of human beings, and
he cannot but think with interest of them.

The grapes, though their leaves are withering and
falling, are yet too sour to eat.

In the summer we lay up a stock of experiences for
the winter, as the squirrel of nuts, — something for
conversation in winter evenings. I love to think then
of the more distant walks I took in summer.2

At the powder-mills the carbonic acid gas in the road
from the building where they were making charcoal
made us cough for twenty or thirty rods.

Saw some gray squirrels whirling their cylinder by
the roadside. How fitted that cylinder to this animal!
“ A squirrel is easily taught to turn his cylinder ” might
be a saying frequently applicable. And as they turned,
one leaped over or dodged under another most grace¬
fully and unexpectedly, with interweaving motions.
It was the circus and menagerie combined. So human
they were, exhibiting themselves.

In the Marlborough road, I forgot to say. We brushed
the Polygonum articulatum with its spikes of reddish-
white flowers, a slender and tender plant which loves
the middle of dry and sandy not-much-travelled roads.
To find that the very atoms bloom, that there are

1 Vide last journal for bare foot track in Comer road [p. 328 of
this volume].

3 [CMnning, p. 70.]

1851] WRITING ON MANY SUBJECTS 457

flowers we rudely brush against which only the micro¬
scope reveals!

It is wise to write on many subjects, to try many
themes, that so you may find the right and inspiring
one. Be greedy of occasions to express your thought.
Improve the opportunity to draw analogies. There are
innumerable avenues to a perception of the truth. Im¬
prove the suggestion of each object however humble,
however slight and transient the provocation. What
else is there to be improved ? Who knows what oppor¬
tunities he may neglect ? It is not in vain that the mind
turns aside this way or that: follow its leading; apply
it whither it inclines to go. Probe the universe in a
myriad points. Be avaricious of these impulses. You
must try a thousand themes before you find the right
one, as nature makes a thousand acorns to get one oak.
He is a wise man and experienced who has taken many
views; to whom stones and plants and animals and a
myriad objects have each suggested something, con¬
tributed something.1

And now, methinks, this wider wood-path 2 is not
bad, for it admits of society more conveniently. Two
can walk side by side in it in the ruts, aye, and one
more in the horse-track.3 The Indian walked in single
file, more solitary, — not side by side, chatting as he
went. The woodman’s cart and sled make just the
path two walkers want through the wood.

Beyond the powder-mills we watched some fat oxen,

1 [Charming, p. 86.]

2 By Second Division Brook.

8 [Charming, p. 70.]

JOURNAL

458

[Sept. 4

elephantine, behemoths, — one Rufus-Hosmer-eyed,
with the long lash and projecting eye-ball.

Now past the paper-mills, by the westernmost road
east of the river, the first new ground we ’ve reached.

Not only the prunella turns lake, but the Hypericum
Virginicum in the hollows by the roadside, — a hand¬
some blush. A part of the autumnal tints, ripe leaves.
Leaves acquire red blood. Red colors touch our blood,
and excite us as well as cows and geese.

And now we leave the road and go through the woods
and swamps toward Boon’s Pond, crossing two or three
roads and by Potter’s house in Stow; still on east of
river. The fruit of the Pyrola rotundifolia in the damp
woods. Larch trees in Stow about the houses. Beyond
Potter’s we struck into the extensive wooded plain
where the ponds are found in Stow, Sudbury, and Marl¬
borough. Part of it called Boon’s Plain.1 Boon said to
have lived on or under Bailey’s Hill at west of pond.
Killed by Indians between Boon[’s Pond] and White’s
Pond as he was driving his ox-cart. The oxen ran off to
Marlborough garrison-house. His remains have been
searched for. A sandy plain, a large level tract. The
pond shores handsome enough, but water shallow and
muddy looking. Well-wooded shores. The maples
begin to show red about it. Much fished.

Saw a load of sunflowers in a farmers [sic]. Such is
the destiny of this large, coarse flower; the farmers
gather it like pumpkins.

Returned by railroad down the Assabet. A potato-
field yellow with wild radish. But no good place to
1 Vide hawks [p. 480].

DAMMED STREAMS

459

1851]

bathe for three miles, Knight’s new dam has so raised
the river. A permanent freshet, as it were, the fluviatile
trees standing dead for fish hawk perches, and the
water stagnant for weeds to grow in. You have only to
dam up a running stream to give it the aspect of a dead
stream, and to some degree restore its primitive wild ap¬
pearance. Tracts made inaccessible to man and at the
same time more fertile. Some speculator comes and
dams up the stream below, and lo ! the water stands over
all meadows, making impassable morasses and dead
trees for fish hawks, — a wild, stagnant, fenny country,
the last gasp of wildness before it yields to the civiliza¬
tion of the factory, — to cheer the eyes of the factory
people and educate them. It makes a little wilderness
above the factories.

The woodbine now begins to hang red about the
maples and other trees.

As I looked back up the stream from near the bridge
(I suppose on the road from Potter’s house to Stow), I
on the railroad, I saw the ripples sparkling in the sun,
reminding me of the sparkling icy fleets which I saw last
winter; and I saw how one corresponded to the other, ice
waves to water ones; the erect ice-flakes were the waves
stereotyped. It was the same sight, the reflection of the
sun sparkling from a myriad slanting surfaces at a dis¬
tance, a rippled water surface or a crystallized frozen one.

Here crossed the river and climbed the high hills on
the west side. The walnut trees con- formed in

their branches to the slope of the hill, being just

as high from the ground on the upper ^ side as on
the lower.

460

JOURNAL

[Sept. 4

On all sides now I see and smell the withering leaves
of brush that has been cut to clear the land. I see some
blackened tracts which have been burnt over. It is
remarkable, for it is rare to see the surface of the earth
black. And in the horizon I can see the smokes of sev¬
eral fires. The farmers improve this season, which is
the driest, their haying being done and their harvest
not begun, to do these jobs, — burn brush, build walls,
dig ditches, cut turf. This is what I find them doing all
over the country now; also topping corn and digging
potatoes.

Saw quite a flock, for the first time, of goldfinches.

On the high, round hills in the east and southeast of
Stow, — perchance they are called the Assabet Hills,
— rising directly from the river. They are the high¬
est I know rising thus. The rounded hills of Stow.
A hill and valley country. Very different from Con¬
cord.

It had been a warm day, especially warm to the head.
I do not perspire as in the early summer, but am sensible
of the ripening heat, more as if by contact. Suddenly
the wind changed to east, and the atmosphere grew
more and more hazy and thick on that side, obstructing
the view, while it was yet clear in the west. I thought
it was the result of the cooler air from over the sea meet¬
ing and condensing the vapor in the warm air of the
land. That was the haze, or thin, dry fog which some
call smoke. It gradually moved westward and affected
the prospect on that side somewhat. It was a very thin
fog invading all the east. I felt the cool air from the
ocean, and it was very refreshing. I opened my bosom

461

1851] THE DOG OF THE WOODS

and my mouth to inhale it. Very delicious and invigo¬
rating.

We sat on the top of those hills looking down on the
new brick ice-house. Where there are several hills near
together, you cannot determine at once which is the
highest, whether the one you are on or the next. So,
when great men are assembled, each yields an uncer¬
tain respect to the other, as if it were not certain whose
crown rose highest.

Under the nut trees on these hills, the grass is short
and green as if grazed close by cattle who had stood
there for shade, making a distinct circular yard. Yet,
as there is no dung and the form corresponds so closely
to the tree, I doubt if that can be the cause.

On hillside north of river above powder-mills the
Pycnanthemum incanum (mountain mint, calamint)
and the Lespedeza violacea.

Saw what I thought a small red dog in the road, which
cantered along over the bridge this side the powder-
mills and then turned into the woods. This decided
me — this turning into the woods — that it was a fox.
The dog of the woods, the dog that is more at home in
the woods than in the roads and fields. I do not often
see a dog turning into the woods.

Some large white ( ?) oak acorns this side the last-
named bridge. A few oaks stand in the pastures still,
great ornaments. I do not see any young ones springing
up to supply their places. Will there be any a hundred
years hence ? These are the remnants of the primitive
wood, methinks. We are a young people and have not
learned by experience the consequence of cutting off the

462 JOURNAL [Sept. 4

forest. One day they will be planted, methinks, and
nature reinstated to some extent.

I love to see the yellow knots and their lengthened
stain on the dry, unpainted pitch [ ?] -pine boards on
bams and other buildings, — the Dugan house, for
instance. The indestructible yellow fat ! it fats my eyes
to see it; worthy for art to imitate, telling of branches
in the forest once.

Sept. 5. No doubt, like plants, we are fed through
the atmosphere, and the varying atmospheres of various
seasons of the year feed us variously. How often we are
sensible of being thus fed and invigorated! And all
nature contributes to this aerial diet its food of finest
quality. Methinks that in the fragrance of the fruits I
get a finer flavor, and in beauty (which is appreciated
by sight — the taste and smell of the eye) a finer still.
As Wilkinson says, “the physical man himself is the
builded aroma of the world. This then, at least, is the
office of the lungs — to drink the atmosphere with the
planet dissolved in it.” “ What is the import of change
of air , and how each pair of lungs has a native air under
some one dome ’of the sky.”

Wilkinson’s book to some extent realizes what I have
dreamed of, — a return to the primitive analogical and
derivative senses of words. His ability to trace analogies
often leads him to a truer word than more remarkable
writers have found; as when, in his chapter on the hu¬
man skin, he describes the papillary cutis as “an en¬
campment of small conical tents coextensive with the
surface of the body.” The faith he puts in old and cur-

FASTIDIOUSNESS

463

1851]

rent expressions as having sprung from an instinct
wiser than science, and safely to be trusted if they can
be interpreted. The man of science discovers no world
for the mind of man with all its faculties to inhabit.
Wilkinson finds a home for the imagination, and it is no
longer outcast and homeless. All perception of truth is
the detection of an analogy; we reason from our hands
to our head.

It is remarkable that Kalm says in 1748 (being in
Philadelphia) : “ Coals have not yet been found in Penn¬
sylvania; but people pretend to have seen them higher
up in the country among the natives. Many people how¬
ever agree that they are met with in great quantity
more to the north, near Cape Breton.”

As we grow old we live more coarsely, we relax a
little in our disciplines, and, to some extent, cease to
obey our finest instincts. We are more careless about
our diet and our chastity. But we should be fastidious
to the extreme of sanity.1 All wisdom is the reward of
a discipline, conscious or unconscious.

By moonlight at Potter’s Field toward Bear Garden
Hill, 8 p. m. The whip-poor-wills sing.

Cultivate reverence. It is as if you were so much more
respectable yourself. By the quality of a man’s writing,
by the elevation of its tone, you may measure his self-
respect. How shall a man continue his culture after
manhood ?

Moonlight on Fair Haven Pond seen from the Cliffs.
A sheeny lake in the midst of a boundless forest, the
1 [Cape Cod , and Miscellanies, p. 468; Misc., Riv. 270.]

464

JOURNAL

[Sept. 5

windy surf sounding freshly and wildly in the single
pine behind you; the silence of hushed wolves in the
wilderness, and, as you fancy, moose looking off from
the shore of the lake. The stars of poetry and history
and unexplored nature looking down on the scene. This
is my world now, with a dull whitish mark curving north¬
ward through the forest marking the outlet to the lake.
Fair Haven by moonlight lies there like a lake in the
Maine wilderness in the midst of a primitive forest
untrodden by man. This light and this hour take the
civilization all out of the landscape. Even in villages
dogs bay the moon; in forests like this we listen to hear
wolves howl to Cynthia.

Even at this hour in the evening the crickets chirp,
the small birds peep, the wind roars in the wood, as if
it were just before dawn. The moonlight seems to lin¬
ger as if it were giving way to the light of coming day.

The landscape seen from the slightest elevation by
moonlight is seen remotely, and flattened, as it were,
into mere light and shade, open field and forest, like the
surface of the earth seen from the top of a mountain.

How much excited we are, how much recruited, by a
great many particular fragrances! A field of ripening
corn, now at night, that has been topped, with the stalks
stacked up to dry, — an inexpressibly dry, rich, sweet,
ripening scent.1 I feel as if I were an ear of ripening
corn myself. Is not the whole air then a compound of
such odors undistinguishable ? Drying corn-stalks in a
field; what an herb-garden! 2

1 [See Excursions , p. 327; Riv. 403.]

2 [Charming, pp. 251, 252.]

A FORMALIST

465

1851]

Sept. 6. The other afternoon I met Sam H - walk¬

ing on the railroad between the depot and the back
road. It was something quite novel to see him there,
though the railroad there is only a short thorough¬
fare to the public road. It then occurred to me that I
had never met Mr. H. on the railroad, though he walks
every day, and moreover that it would be quite impos¬
sible for him to walk on the railroad, such a formalist as
he is, such strait-jackets we weave for ourselves. He
could do nothing that was not sanctioned by the longest
use of men, and as men had voted in all their assemblies
from the first to travel on the public way, he would con¬
fine himself to that. It would no doubt seem to him
very improper, not to say undignified, to walk on the
railroad; and then, is it not forbidden by the railroad
corporations ? I was sure he could not keep the railroad,
but was merely using the thoroughfare here which a
thousand pioneers had prepared for him. I stood to see
what he would do. He turned off the rails directly on to
the back road and pursued his walk. A passing train
will never meet him on the railroad causeway. How
much of the life of certain men goes to sustain, to make
respected, the institutions of society. They are the ones
who pay the heaviest tax. Here are certain valuable
institutions which can only be sustained by a wonder¬
ful strain which appears all to come upon certain Spar¬
tans who volunteer. Certain men are always to be found
— especially the children of our present institutions —
who are bom with an instinct to perceive them. They
are, in effect, supported by a fund which society possesses
for that end, or they receive a pension and their life

466

JOURNAL

[Sept. 6

seems to be a sinecure, — but it is not. The unwritten
laws are the most stringent. They are required to wear
a certain dress. What an array of gentlemen whose sole
employment — and it is no sinecure — is to support
their dignity, and with it the dignity of so many indis¬
pensable institutions!

The use of many vegetables — wild plants — for
food, which botanists relate, such as Kalm at Cap aux
Oyes on the St. Lawrence, viz. the sea plantain, sea-
rocket, sweet-gale, etc., etc., making us feel the poorer
at first because we never use them, really advertises us
of our superior riches, and shows to what extremities
men have been driven in times of scarcity. No people
that fare as well as we will grub these weeds out of the
seashore.

2 p. m. — To Hapgood’s in Acton direct, returning via
Strawberry Hill and Smith’s Road.

The ripening grapes begin to fill the air with their
fragrance. The vervain will hardly do for a clock, for I
perceive that some later and smaller specimens have
not much more than begun to blossom, while most have
done. Saw a tall pear tree by the roadside beyond Har¬
ris’s in front of Hapgood’s. Saw the lambkill (Kalmia
angustijolia) in blossom — a few fresh blossoms at the
ends of the fresh twigs — on Strawberry Hill, beautiful
bright flowers. Apparently a new spring with it, while
seed vessels, apparently of this year, hung dry below.

From Strawberry Hill the first, but a very slight,,
glimpse of Nagog Pond by standing up on the wall.
That is enough to relate of a hill, methinks, that its

FULLNESS OF LIFE

467

1851]

elevation gives you the first sight of some distant lake.
The horizon is remarkably blue with mist this after¬
noon. Looking from this hill over Acton, successive val¬
leys filled with blue mist appear, and divided by darker
lines of wooded hills. The shadows of the elms are
deepened, as if the whole atmosphere were permeated
by floods of ether. Annursnack never looked so well
as now seen from this hill. The ether gives a velvet
softness to the whole landscape. The hills float in it. A
blue veil is drawn over the earth.

The elecampane (Inula Helenium), with its broad
leaves wrinkled underneath and the remains of sun¬
flower-like blossoms, in front of Nathan Brooks’s, Acton,
and near J. H. Wheeler’s. Prenanthes alba ; this Gray
calls Nabalus albus , white lettuce or rattlesnake-root.
Also I seem ( ?) to have found Nabalus Fraseri , or lion’s-
foot.

Every morning for a week there has been a fog which
all disappeared by seven or eight o’clock.

A large field of sunflowers for hens now in full bloom
at Temple’s, surrounding the house, and now, at 6 o’clock
p. m., facing the east.

The larches in the front yards, both Scotch and
American, have turned red. Their fall has come.

Sept. 7. We sometimes experience a mere fullness of
life, which does not find any channels to flow into. We
are stimulated, but to no obvious purpose. I feel myself
uncommonly prepared for some literary work, but I can
select no work. I am prepared not so much for con¬
templation, as for forceful expression. I am braced

468

JOURNAL

[Sept. 7

both physically and intellectually. It is not so much the
music as the marching to the music that I feel. I feel
that the juices of the fruits which I have eaten, the
melons and apples, have ascended to my brain and are
stimulating it. They give me a heady force. Now I can
write nervously. Carlyle’s writing is for the most part
of this character.

Miss Martineau’s last book is not so bad as the
timidity which fears its influence. As if the popularity
of this or that book would be so fatal, and man would
not still be man in the world. Nothing is so much to be
feared as fear. Atheism may comparatively be popular
with God himself.1

What shall we say of these timid folk who carry the
principle of thinking nothing and doing nothing and
being nothing to such an extreme? As if, in the ab¬
sence of thought, that vast yearning of their natures
for something to fill the vacuum made the least tradi¬
tionary expression and shadow of a thought to be clung
to with instinctive tenacity. They atone for their pro¬
ducing nothing by a brutish respect for something.
They are as simple as oxen, and as guiltless of thought
and reflection. Their reflections are reflected from
other minds. The creature of institutions, bigoted and
a conservatist, can say nothing hearty. He cannot meet
life with life, but only with words. He rebuts you by
avoiding you. He is shocked like a woman.

Our ecstatic states, which appear to yield so little
fruit, have this value at least: though in the seasons
when our genius reigns we may be powerless for ex-
1 [Channing, p. 90.]

1851] MOMENTS OF INSPIRATION 469

pression, yet, in calmer seasons, when our talent is
active, the memory of those rarer moods comes to color
our picture and is the permanent paint-pot, as it were,
into which we dip our brush. Thus no life or experi¬
ence goes unreported at last; but if it be not solid gold
it is gold-leaf, which gilds the furniture of the mind.
It is an experience of infinite beauty on which we un¬
failingly draw, which enables us to exaggerate ever
truly. Our moments of inspiration are not lost though
we have no particular poem to show for them ; for those
experiences have left an indelible impression, and we
are ever and anon reminded of them. Their truth sub¬
sides, and in cooler moments we can use them as paint
to gild and adorn our prose. When I despair to sing
them, I will remember that they will furnish me with
paint with which to adorn and preserve the works of
talent one day. They are like a pot of pure ether. They
lend the writer when the moment comes a certain super¬
fluity of wealth, making his expression to overrun and
float itself. It is the difference between our river, now
parched and dried up, exposing its unsightly and weedy
bottom, and the same when, in the spring, it covers all
the meads with a chain of placid lakes, reflecting the
forests and the skies.

We are receiving our portion of the infinite. The
art of life ! Was there ever anything memorable written
upon it ? By what disciplines to secure the most life,
with what care to watch our thoughts. To observe what
transpires, not in the street, but in the mind and heart
of me ! I do not remember any page which will tell me
how to spend this afternoon. I do not so much wish to

470

JOURNAL

[Sept. 7

know how to economize time as how to spend it, by
what means to grow rich, that the day may not have
been in vain.

What if one moon has come and gone with its world
of poetry, its weird teachings, its oracular suggestions ?
So divine a creature, freighted with hints for me, and I
not use her! One moon gone by unnoticed ! ! Suppose
you attend to the hints, to the suggestions, which the
moon makes for one month, — commonly in vain, —
will they not be very different from anything in litera¬
ture or religion or philosophy ? 1

The scenery, when it is truly seen, reacts on the life
of the seer. How to live. How to get the most life. As
if you were to teach the young hunter how to entrap
his game. How to extract its honey from the flower of
the world. That is my every-day business. I am as
busy as a bee about it. I ramble over all fields on that
errand, and am never so happy as when I feel myself
heavy with honey and wax. I am like a bee searching
the livelong day for the sweets of nature. Do I not im¬
pregnate and intermix the flowers, produce rare and
finer varieties by transferring my eyes from one to an¬
other ? I do as naturally and as joyfully, with my own
humming music, seek honey all the day. With what
honeyed thought any experience yields me I take a bee
line to my cell. It is with flowers I would deal. Where
is the flower, there is the honey, — which is perchance
the nectareous portion of the fruit, — there is to be the
fruit, and no doubt flowers are thus colored and painted
to attract and guide the bee. So by the dawning or radi-
1 [Excursions, p. 324; Riv. 398.]

GLADNESS

471

1851]

ance of beauty are we advertised where is the honey and
the fruit of thought, of discourse, and of action. We
are first attracted by the beauty of the flower, before
we discover the honey which is a foretaste of the future
fruit. Did not the young Achilles ( ?) spend his youth
learning how to hunt ? The art of spending a day. If
it is possible that we may be addressed, it behooves us
to be attentive. If by watching all day and all night I
may detect some trace of the Ineffable, then will it not
be worth the while to watch ? Watch and pray without
ceasing, but not necessarily in sadness. Be of good
cheer. Those Jews were too sad: to another people a
still deeper revelation may suggest only joy. Don’t I
know what gladness is ? Is it but the reflex of sadness,
its back side ? In the Hebrew gladness, I hear but too
distinctly still the sound of sadness retreating. Give me
a gladness which has never given place to sadness.

I am convinced that men are not well employed, that
this is not the way to spend a day. If by patience, if
by watching, I can secure one new ray of light, can feel
myself elevated for an instant upon Pisgah, the world
which was dead prose to me become living and divine,
shall I not watch ever ? shall I not be a watchman hence¬
forth ? If by watching a whole year on the city’s walls
I may obtain a communication from heaven, shall I not
do well to shut up my shop and turn a watchman ? Can
a youth, a man, do more wisely than to go where his life
is to [be] found ? As if I had suffered that to be rumor
which may be verified. We are surrounded by a rich
and fertile mystery. May we not probe it, pry into it,
employ ourselves about it, a little ? To devote your life

472

JOURNAL

[Sept. 7

to the discovery of the divinity in nature or to the eat¬
ing of oysters, would they not be attended with very
different results ?

I cannot easily buy a blank-book to write thoughts
in; they are all ruled for dollars and cejits.1

If the wine, the water, which will nourish me grows
on the surface of the moon, I will do the best I can to
go to the moon for it.

The discoveries which we make abroad are special
and particular; those which we make at home are
general and significant. The further off, the nearer the
surface. The nearer home, the deeper. Go in search
of the springs of life, and you will get exercise enough.
Think of a man’s swinging dumb-bells for his health,
when those springs are bubbling in far-off pastures
unsought by him! The seeming necessity of swinging
dumb-bells proves that he has lost his way.2

To watch for, describe, all the divine features which
I detect in Nature.

My profession is to be always on the alert to find
God in nature, to know his lurking-places, to attend all
the oratorios, the operas, in nature.

The mind may perchance be persuaded to act, to
energize, by the action and energy of the body. Any
kind of liquid will fetch the pump.

We all have our states of fullness and of emptiness,
but we overflow at different points. One overflows
through the sensual outlets, another through his heart,
another through his head, and another perchance only

1 [Cape Cod, and Miscellanies , p. 456; Misc., Riv. 254, 255.]

* [Excursions, p. 209; Riv. 257.]

473

1851] A SEPTEMBER EVENING

through the higher part of his head, or his poetic faculty.
It depends on where each is tight and open. We can,
perchance, then direct our nutriment to those organs
we specially use.

How happens it that there are few men so well em¬
ployed, — so much to their mind, — but that a little
money or fame would buy them off from their present
pursuits ?

To Conantum via fields, Hubbard’s Grove, and
grain-field, to Tupelo Cliff and Conantum and returning
over peak same way. 6 p. m.

I hear no larks sing at evening as in the spring, nor
robins; only a few distressed notes from the robin. In
Hubbard’s grain-field beyond the brook, now the sun
is down. The air is very still. There is a fine sound
of crickets, not loud. The woods and single trees are
heavier masses in the landscape than in the spring.
Night has more allies. The heavy shadows of woods
and trees are remarkable now. The meadows are green
with their second crop. I hear only a tree-toad or song
sparrow singing as in spring, at long intervals. The
Roman wormwood is beginning to yellow-green my
shoes, — intermingled with the blue-curls over the sand
in this grain-field. Perchance some poet likened this
yellow dust to the ambrosia of the gods. The birds
are remarkably silent. At the bridge perceive the bats
are out. And the yet silvery moon, not quite full, is
reflected in the water. The water is perfectly still, and
there is a red tinge from the evening sky in it.

The sky is singularly marked this evening. There
are bars or rays of nebulous light springing from the

474

JOURNAL

[Sept. 7

western horizon where the sun has disappeared, and
alternating with beautiful blue rays, more blue by far
than any other portion of the sky. These continue to
diverge till they have reached the middle, and then
converge to the eastern horizon, making a symmetrical
figure like the divisions of a muskmelon, not very bright,
yet distinct, though growing less and less bright toward
the east. It was a quite remarkable phenomenon en¬
compassing the heavens, as if you were to behold the
divisions of a muskmelon thus alternately colored from
within it. A proper vision, a colored mist. The most
beautiful thing in nature is the sun reflected from a
tearful cloud. These white and blue ribs embraced the
earth. The two outer blues much the brightest and
matching one another.

You hear the hum of mosquitoes.

Going up the road. The sound of the crickets is now
much more universal and loud. Now in the fields I see
the white streak of the neottia in the twilight. The
whip-poor-wills sing far off. I smell burnt land some¬
where. At Tupelo Cliff I hear the sound of singers on
the river, young men and women, — which is unusual
here, — returning from their row. Man’s voice, thus
uttered, fits well the spaces. It fills nature. And, after
all, the singing of men is something far grander than
any natural sound. It is wonderful that men do not
oftener sing in the fields, by day and night. I bathe
at the north side the Cliff, while the moon shines round
the end of the rock. The opposite Cliff is reflected in
the water. Then sit on the south side of the Cliff in the
woods. One or two fireflies. Could it be a glow-worm ?

1851] MOONLIGHT ON THE RIVER 475

I thought I saw one or two in the air. That is all in this
walk. I hear a whip-poor-will uttering a cluck of sus¬
picion in my rear. He is suspicious and inquisitive.
The river stretches off southward from me. I see the
sheeny portions of its western shore interruptedly for
a quarter of a mile, where the moonlight is reflected
from the pads, a strong, gleaming light while the water
is lost in the obscurity. I hear the sound from time to
time of a leaping fish, or a frog, or a muskrat, or turtle.
It is even warmer, methinks , than it was in August,
and it is perfectly clear, — the air. I know not how it
is that this universal crickets’ creak should sound thus
regularly intermittent, as if for the most part they fell
in with one another and creaked in time, making a cer¬
tain pulsing sound, a sort of breathing or panting of all
nature. You sit twenty feet above the still river; see the
sheeny pads, and the moon, and some bare tree-tops in
the distant horizon. Those bare tree-tops add greatly
to the wildness.

Lower down I see the moon in the water as bright as
in the heavens; only the water-bugs disturb its disk;
and now I catch a faint glassy glare from the whole
river surface, which before was simply dark. This is
set in a frame of double darkness on the east, i. e. the
reflected shore of woods and hills and the reality, the
shadow and the substance, bipartite, answering to
each.

I see the northern lights over my shoulder, to remind
me of the Esquimaux and that they are still my con¬
temporaries on this globe, that they too are taking
their walks on another part of the planet, in pursuit

476

JOURNAL

[Sept. 7

of seals, perchance.1 The stars are dimly reflected in
the water. The path of water-bugs in the moon’s rays
is like ripples of light. It is only when you stand front¬
ing the sun or moon that you see their light reflected
in the water. I hear no frogs these nights, — bullfrogs
or others, — as in the spring. It is not the season of
sound.

At Conantum end, just under the wall. From this
point and at this height I do not perceive any bright or
yellowish light on Fair Haven, but an oily and glass¬
like smoothness on its southwestern bay, through a very
slight mistiness. Two or three pines appear to stand in
the moonlit air on this side of the pond, while the en¬
lightened portion of the water is bounded by the heavy
reflection of the wood on the east. It was so soft and
velvety a light as contained a thousand placid days
sweetly put to rest in the bosom of the water. So looked
the North Twin Lake in the Maine woods. It reminds
me of placid lakes in the mid-noon of Indian summer
days, but yet more placid and civilized, suggesting a
higher cultivation, as the wild ever does, which aeons
of summer days have gone to make. Like a summer
day seen far away. All the effects of sunlight, with a
softer tone; and all this stillness of the water and the
air superadded, and the witchery of the hour. What
gods are they that require so fair a vase of gleaming
water to their prospect in the midst of the wild woods
by night? Else why this beauty allotted to night, a
gem to sparkle in the zone of night ? They are strange
gods now out; methinks their names are not in any
1 [Charming, p. 115.]

1851] FAIR HAVEN BY MOONLIGHT 477

mythology.1 I can faintly trace its zigzag border of
sheeny pads even here. If such is then to be seen in re¬
motest wildernesses, does it not suggest its own nymphs
and wood gods to enjoy it ? As when, at middle of the
placid noon in Indian-summer days, all the surface of
a lake is as one cobweb gleaming in the sun, which
heaves gently to the passing zephyr. There was the
lake, its glassy surface just distinguishable, its sheeny
shore of pads, with a few pines bathed in light on its
hither shore, just as in the middle of a November day,
except that this was the chaster light of the moon, the
cooler temperature of the night, and there were the
deep shades of night that fenced it round and im-
bosomed. It tells of a far-away, long-passed civiliza¬
tion, of an antiquity superior to time, unappreciable
by time.

Is there such virtue in raking cranberries that those
men’s industry whom I now see on the meadow shall
reprove my idleness? Can I not go over those same
meadows after them, and rake still more valuable fruits ?
Can I not rake with my mind? Can I not rake a
thought, perchance, which shall be worth a bushel of
cranberries ?

A certain refinement and civilization in nature* which
increases with the wildness. The civilization that con¬
sists with wildness, the light that is in night. A smile
as in a dream on the face of the sleeping lake. There
is light enough to show what we see, what night has to
exhibit. Any more would obscure these objects. I am
not advertised of any deficiency of light.2 The actual
1 [Channing, p. 116.] a [Charming, p. 116.]

478 JOURNAL [Sept. 7

is fair as a vision or a dream. If ever we have attained
to any nobleness, even in our imagination and inten¬
tions, that will surely ennoble the features of nature
for us, that will clothe them with beauty. Of course no
jeweller ever dealt with a gem so fair and suggestive
as this actual lake, the scene, it may be, of so much
noble and poetic life, and not merely [to] adorn some
monarch’s crown.

It is remarkably still at this hour and season. No
sound of bird or beast for the most part. This has none
of the reputed noxious qualities of night.

On the peak. The faint sounds of birds, dreaming
aloud in the night, the fresh, cool air, and sound of the
wind rushing over the rocks remind me of the tops of
mountains. That is, all the earth is but the outside
of the planet bordering on the hard-eyed sky. Equally
withdrawn and near to heaven is this pasture as the
summit of the White Mountains. All the earth’s sur¬
face like a mountain-top, for I see its relation to heaven
as simply, and am not imposed upon by a difference of
a few feet in elevation. In this faint, hoaiy light, all
fields are like a mossy rock and remote from the culti¬
vated plains of day. All is equally savage, equally
solitary and cool-aired, and the slight difference in
elevation is felt to be unimportant. It is all one with
Caucasus, the slightest hill pasture.

The basswood had a singularly solid look and
sharply defined, as by a web or film, as if its leaves
covered it like scales.

Scared up a whip-poor-will on the ground on the hill.
Will not my townsmen consider me a benefactor if

NORTHERN LIGHTS

479

1851]

I conquer some realms from the night, if I can show
them that there is some beauty awake while they are
asleep, if I add to the domains of poetry,1 if I report to
the gazettes anything transpiring in our midst worthy
of man’s attention ? I will say nothing now to the dis¬
paragement of Day, for he is not here to defend himself.

The northern lights now, as I descend from the
Conantum house, have become a crescent of light
crowned with short, shooting flames, — or the shadows
of flames, for sometimes they are dark as well as white.
There is scarcely any dew even in the low lands.

Now the fire in the north increases wonderfully,
not shooting up so much as creeping along, like a fire
on the mountains of the north seen afar in the night.
The Hyperborean gods are burning brush, and it
spread, and all the hoes in heaven could n’t stop it.
It spread from west to east over the crescent hill. Like
a vast fiery worm it lay across the northern sky, broken
into many pieces; and each piece, with rainbow colors
skirting it, strove to advance itself toward the east.
Worm-like, on its own annular muscles. It has spread
into their choicest wood-lots. Now it shoots up like a
single solitary watch-fire or burning bush, or where it
ran up a pine tree like powder, and still it continues
to gleam here and there like a fat stump in the burning,
and is reflected in the water. And now I see the gods
by great exertions have got it under, and the stars have
come out without fear, in peace.

Though no birds sing, the crickets vibrate their
shrill and stridulous cymbals, especially on the alders
1 [Excursions, p. 323; Riv. 397, 398.]

480 JOURNAL [Sept. 7

of the causeway, those minstrels especially engaged
for Night’s quire.1

It takes some time to wear off the trivial impression
which the day has made, and thus the first hours of
night are sometimes lost.

There were two hen-hawks soared and circled for
our entertainment, when we were in the woods on that
Boon Plain the other day, crossing each other’s orbits
from time to time, alternating like the squirrels of the
morning, till, alarmed by our imitation of a hawk’s
shrill cry, they gradually inflated themselves, made
themselves more aerial, and rose higher and higher into
the heavens, and were at length lost to sight; yet all
the while earnestly looking, scanning the surface of the
earth for a stray mouse or rabbit.2

Sept 8. No fog this morning. Shall I not have words
as fresh as my thoughts ? Shall I use any other man’s
word ? A genuine thought or feeling can find expres¬
sion for itself, if it have to invent hieroglyphics. It has
the universe for type-metal. It is for want of original
thought that one man’s style is like another’s.

Certainly the voice of no bird or beast can be com¬
pared with that of man for true melody. All other sounds
seem to be hushed, as if their possessors were attending,
when the voice of man is heard in melody. The air
gladly bears the burden. It is infinitely significant.
Man only sings in concert. The bird’s song is a mere

1 [Channing, pp. 116, 117.]

2 Vide back [p. 458],

1851] THE GRASS AND THE YEAR 481

interjectional shout of joy; man’s a glorious expression
of the foundations of his joy.

Do not the song of birds and the fireflies go with the
grass ? While the grass is fresh, the earth is in its vigor.
The greenness of the grass is the best symptom or evi¬
dence of the earth’s youth or health. Perhaps it will be
found that when the grass ceases to be fresh and green,
or after June, the birds have ceased to sing, and that
the fireflies, too, no longer in myriads sparkle in the
meadows. Perhaps a history of the year would be a
history of the grass, or of a leaf, regarding the grass-
blades as leaves, for it is equally true that the leaves
soon lose their freshness and soundness, and become
the prey of insects and of drought. Plants commonly
soon cease to grow for the year, unless they may have
a fall growth, which is a kind of second spring. In the
feelings of the man, too, the year is already past, and
he looks forward to the coming winter. His occasional
rejuvenescence and faith in the current time is like the
aftermath, a scanty crop. The enterprise which he has
not already undertaken cannot be undertaken this year.
The period of youth is past. The year may be in its
summer, in its manhood, but it is no longer in the flower
of its age. It is a season of withering, of dust and heat,
a season of small fruits and trivial experiences. Sum¬
mer thus answers to manhood. But there is an after-
math in early autumn, and some spring flowers bloom
again, followed by an Indian summer of finer- atmos¬
phere and of a pensive beauty. May my life be not
destitute of its Indian summer, a season of fine and clear,
mild weather in which I may prolong my hunting be-

482

JOURNAL

[Sept. 8

fore the winter comes, when I may once more lie on the
ground with faith, as in spring, and even with more
serene confidence. And then I will [wrap the] drapery
of summer about me and lie down to pleasant dreams.
As one year passes into another through the medium of
winter, so does this our fife pass into another through
the medium of death.

De Quincey and Dickens have not moderation enough.
They never stutter; they flow too readily.

The tree-primrose and the dwarf ditto and epilobium
still. Locust is heard. Aster amplexicaulis, beautiful
blue, purplish blue (?), about twenty-four rayed.
Utriciilaria vulgaris, bladderwort. Dandelion and
houstonia.

Sept 9. 2 A. m. — The moon not quite full. To Co-
nantum via road.

There is a low vapor in the meadows beyond the
depot, dense and white, though scarcely higher than
a man’s head, concealing the stems of the trees. I see
that the oaks, which are so dark and distinctly outlined,
are illumined by the moon on the opposite side. This
as I go up the back road. A few thin, ineffectual clouds
in the sky. I come out thus into the moonlit night,
where men are not, as if into a scenery anciently de¬
serted by men. The life of men is like a dream. It is
three thousand years since night has had possession.
Go forth and hear the crickets chirp at midnight. Hear
if their dynasty is not an ancient one and well founded.
I feel the antiquity of the night. She surely repossesses
herself of her realms, as if her dynasty were uninter-

THE SKY AT NIGHT

483

1851]

rupted, or she had underlain the day. No sounds but
the steady creaking of crickets and the occasional crow¬
ing of cocks.

I go by the farmer’s houses and barns, standing there
in the dim light under the trees, as if they lay at an
immense distance or under a veil. The farmer and his
oxen now all asleep. Not even a watch-dog awake.
The human slumbers. There is less of man in the
world.

The fog in the lowlands on the Corner road is never
still. It now advances and envelops me as I stand to
write these words, then clears away, with ever noise¬
less step. It covers the meadows like a web. I hear the
clock strike three.

Now at the clayey bank. The light of Orion’s belt
seems to show traces of the blue day through which it
came to us. The sky at least is lighter on that side than
in the west, even about the moon. Even by night the sky
is blue and not black, for we see through the veil of
night into the distant atmosphere of day. I see to the
plains of the sun, where the sunbeams are revelling.
The cricket’s ( ?) song, on the alders of the causeway,
not quite so loud at this hour as at evening. The moon
is getting low. I hear a wagon cross one of the bridges
leading into the town. I see the moonlight at this hour
on a different side of objects. I smell the ripe apples
many rods off beyond the bridge. A sultry night; a thin
coat is enough.

On the first top of Conantum. I hear the farmer
harnessing his horse and starting for the distant market,
but no man harnesses himself, and starts for worthier

484

JOURNAL

[Sept. 9

enterprises. One cock-crow tells the whole story of the
farmer’s life. The moon is now sinking into clouds in
the horizon. I see the glow-worms deep in the grass by
the little brookside in midst of Conantum. The moon
shines dun and red. A solitary whip-poor-will sings.

The clock strikes four. A few dogs bark. A few more
wagons start for market, their faint rattling heard in
the distance. I hear my owl without a name; the mur¬
mur of the slow-approaching freight-train, as far off,
perchance, as Waltham; and one early bird.

The round, red moon disappearing in the west. I
detect a whiteness in the east. Some dark, massive
clouds have come over from the west within the hour,
as if attracted by the approaching sun, and have ar¬
ranged themselves raywise about the eastern portal,
as if to bar his coming. They have moved suddenly
and almost unobservedly quite across the sky (which
before was clear) from west to east. No trumpet was
heard which marshalled and advanced these dark
masses of the west’s forces thus rapidly against the
coming day. Column after column the mighty west sent
forth across the sky while men slept, but all in vain.

The eastern horizon is now grown dun-colored,
showing where the advanced guard of the night are
already skirmishing with the vanguard of the sun,
a lurid light tingeing the atmosphere there, while a
dark-columned cloud hangs imminent over the broad
portal, untouched by the glare. Some bird flies over,
making a noise like the barking of a puppy.1 It is yet so
dark that I have dropped my pencil and cannot find it.

1 It was a cuckoo.

A FACTORY-BELL

485

1851]

The sound of the cars is like that of a rushing wind.
They come on slowly. I thought at first a morning wind
was rising. And now (perchance at half-past four) I
hear the sound of some far-off factory-bell arousing
the operatives to their early labors. It sounds very
sweet here. It is very likely some factory which I have
never seen, in some valley which I have never visited;
yet now I hear this, which is its only matin bell, sweet
and inspiring as if it summoned holy men and maids
to worship and not factory girls and men to resume
their trivial toil, as if it were the summons of some
religious or even poetic community. My first impres¬
sion is that it is the matin bell of some holy community
who in a distant valley dwell, a band of spiritual knights,

— thus sounding far and wide, sweet and sonorous, in
harmony with their own morning thoughts. What else
could I suppose fitting this earth and hour ? Some man
of high resolve, devoted soul, has touched the rope;
and by its peals how many men and maids are waked
from peaceful slumbers to fragrant morning thoughts!
Why should I fear to tell that it is Knight’s factory-
bell at Assabet ? A few melodious peals and all is still
again.

The whip-poor-wills now begin to sing in earnest
about half an hour before sunrise, as if making haste
to improve the short time that is left them. As far as
my observation goes, they sing for several hours in the
early part of the night, are silent commonly at midnight,

— though you may meet [them] then sitting on a rock
or flitting silently about, — then sing again just before
sunrise. It grows more and more red in the east — a

486

JOURNAL

[Sept. 9

fine-grained red under the overhanging cloud — and
fighter too, and the threatening clouds are falling off to
southward of the sun’s passage, shrunken and defeated,
leaving his path comparatively clear. The increased
fight shows more distinctly the river and the fog.

5 o’clock. — The fight now reveals a thin film of vapor
like a gossamer veil cast over the lower hills beneath
the Cliffs and stretching to the river, thicker in the
ravines, thinnest on the even slopes. The distant
meadows towards the north beyond Conant’s Grove,
full of fog, appear like a vast lake out of which rise
Annursnack and Ponkawtasset like rounded islands.
Nawshawtuct is a low and wooded isle, scarcely seen
above the waves. The heavens are now clear again. The
vapor, which was confined to the river and meadows,
now rises and creeps up the sides of the hills. I see it in
transparent columns advancing down the valley of the
river, ghost-like, from Fair Haven, and investing some
wooded or rocky promontory, before free. So ghosts
are said to advance.

Annursnack is exactly like some round, steep, distant
hill on the opposite shore of a large lake (and Tabor
on the other side), with here and there some low Brush
Island in middle of the waves (the tops of some oaks
or elms). Oh, what a sail I could take, if I had the right
kind of bark, over to Annursnack ! for there she lies four
miles from land as sailors say. And all the farms and
houses of Concord are at bottom of that sea. So I for¬
get them, and my thought sails triumphantly over them.
As I looked down where the village of Concord lay
buried in fog, I thought of nothing but the surface of

SUNRISE

487

1851]

a lake, a summer sea over which to sail; no more than a
voyager on the Dead Sea who had not read the Testa¬
ment would think of Sodom and Gomorrah, once cities
of the plain. I only wished to get off to one of the low
isles I saw in midst of the [sea] (it may have been the
top of Holbrook’s elm), and spend the whole summer
day there.

Meanwhile the redness in the east had diminished
and was less deep. (The fog over some meadows looked
green.) I went down to Tupelo Cliff to bathe. A great
bittern, which I had scared, flew heavily across the
stream. The redness had risen at length above the dark
cloud, the sun approaching. And next the redness be¬
came a sort of yellowish or fawn-colored light, and the
sun now set fire to the edges of the broken cloud which
had hung over the horizon, and they glowed like burn¬
ing turf.

Sept. 10. As I watch the groves on the meadow
opposite our house, I see how differently they look at
different hours of the day, i. e. in different lights,
when the sun shines on them variously. In the morning,
perchance, they seem one blended mass of light green.
In the afternoon, distinct trees appear, separated by
heavy shadows, and in some places I can see quite
through the grove.

3 p. m. — To the Cliffs and the Grape Cliff beyond.

Hardhack and meadow-sweet are now all dry. I see
the smoke of burning brush in the west horizon this
dry and sultry afternoon, and wish to look off from
some hill. It is a kind of work the farmer cannot do

488

JOURNAL

[Sept. 10

without discovery. Sometimes I smell these smokes
several miles off, and by the odor know it is not a burn¬
ing building, but withered leaves and the rubbish of the
woods and swamp. As I go through the woods, I see
that the ferns have turned brown and give the woods
an autumnal look. The boiling spring is almost com¬
pletely dry. Nothing flows (I mean without the shed),
but there are many hornets and yellow wasps appar¬
ently buzzing and circling about in jealousy of one an¬
other, either drinking the stagnant water, which is the
most accessible this dry parching day, or it may be col¬
lecting something from the slime, — I think the former.

As I go up Fair Haven Hill, I see some signs of the
approaching fall of the white pine. On some trees the
old leaves are already somewhat reddish, though not
enough to give the trees a parti-colored look, and they
come off easily on being touched, — the old leaves on
the lower part of the twigs.

Some farmers are sowing their winter rye ? I see the
fields smoothly rolled. (I hear the locust still.) I see
others plowing steep rocky and bushy fields, appar¬
ently for the same purpose. How beautiful the sprout-
land (burnt plain) seen from the Cliff! No more cheer¬
ing and inspiring sight than a young wood springing
up thus over a large tract, when you look down on it,
the light green of the maples shaded off into the darker
oaks ; and here and there a maple blushes quite red, en¬
livening the scene yet more. Surely this earth is fit to
be inhabited, and many enterprises may be undertaken
with hope where so many young plants are pushing up.
In the spring I burned over a hundred acres till the

1851] THE COLOR OF THE POKE 489

earth was sere and black, and by midsummer this space
was clad in a fresher and more luxuriant green than
the surrounding even. Shall man then despair ? Is he
not a sprout-land too, after never so many searings and
witherings ? 1 If you witness growth and luxuriance,
it is all the same as if you grew luxuriantly.

I see three smokes in Stow. One sends up dark
volumes of wreathed smoke, as if from the mouth of
Erebus. It is remarkable what effects so thin and sub¬
tile a substance as smoke produces, even at a distance,

— dark and heavy and powerful as rocks at a distance.

The woodbine is red on the rocks.

The poke is a very rich and striking plant. Some
which stand under the Cliffs quite dazzled me with
their now purple stems gracefully drooping each way,
their rich, somewhat yellowish, purple-veined leaves, their
bright purple racemes, — peduncles, and pedicels, and
calyx-like petals from which the birds have picked the
berries (these racemes, with their petals now turned to
purple, are more brilliant than anything of the kind), —
flower-buds, flowers, ripe berries and dark purple ones,
and calyx-like petals which have lost their fruit, all on
the same plant. I love to see any redness in the vegeta¬
tion of the temperate zone. It is the richest color. I love
to press these berries between my fingers and see their
rich purple wine staining my hand. It asks a bright sun
on it to make it show to best advantage, and it must be
seen at this season of the year. It speaks to my blood.
Every part of it is flower, such is its superfluity of color,

— a feast of color. That is the richest flower which

1 [Channing, p. 217]

490

JOURNAL

[Sept. 10

most abounds in color. What need to taste the fruit,
to drink the wine, to him who can thus taste and drink
with his eyes ? Its boughs, gracefully drooping, offering
repasts to the birds. It is cardinal in its rank, as in its
color. Nature here is full of blood and heat and luxuri¬
ance. What a triumph it appears in Nature to have
produced and perfected such a plant, — as if this were
enough for a summer.1

The downy seeds of the groundsel are taking their
flight here. The calyx has dismissed them and quite
curled back, having done its part. Lespedeza sessili-
flora , or reticulated lespedeza on the Cliffs now out of
bloom. At the Grape Cliff, the few bright-red leaves
of the tupelo contrast with the polished green ones.
The tupelos with drooping branches.

The grape-vines overrunning and bending down the
maples form little arching bowers over the meadow,
five or six feet in diameter, like parasols held over
the ladies of the harem, in the East. Cuscuta Ameri¬
cana , or dodder, in blossom still. The Desmodium
paniculatum of De Candolle and Gray ( Hedysarum
paniculatum of Linnaeus and Bigelow), tick-trefoil, with
still one blossom, by the path-side up from the meadow.
The rhomboidal joints of its loments adhere to my
clothes. One of an interesting family that thus disperse
themselves. The oak-ball of dirty drab now.2

Sept . 11. Every artisan learns positively something
by his trade. Each craft is familiar with a few simple,

1 [Excursions, pp. 253-255; Riv. 311, 312.]

* [Channing, pp. 216, 217.]

1851] THE STONE-MASON’S CRAFT 491

well-known, well-established facts, not requiring any
genius to discover, but mere use and familiarity. You
may go by the man at his work in the street every day
of your life, and though he is there before you, carry¬
ing into practice certain essential information, you shall
never be the wiser. Each trade is in fact a craft, a cun¬
ning, a covering an ability; and its methods are the
result of a long experience. There sits a stone-mason,
splitting Westford granite for fence-posts. Egypt has
perchance taught New England something in this mat¬
ter. His hammer, his chisels, his wedges, his shims
or half-rounds, his iron spoon, — I suspect that these
tools are hoary with age as with granite dust. He learns
as easily where the best granite comes from as he learns
how to erect that screen to keep off the sun. He knows
that he can drill faster into a large stone than a small
one, because there is less jar and yielding. He deals
in stone as the carpenter in lumber. In many of his
operations only the materials are different. His work
is slow and expensive. Nature is here hard to be over¬
come. He wears up one or two drills in splitting a single
stone. He must sharpen his tools oftener than the car¬
penter. He fights with granite. He knows the temper
of the rocks. He grows stony himself. His tread is pon¬
derous and steady like the fall of a rock. And yet by
patience and art he splits a stone as surely as the car¬
penter or woodcutter a log. So much time and perse¬
verance will accomplish. One would say that mankind
had much less moral than physical energy, that any
day you see men following the trade of splitting rocks,
who yet shrink from undertaking apparently less

492

JOURNAL

[Sept. 11

arduous moral labors, the solving of moral problems.
See how surely he proceeds. He does not hesitate to
drill a dozen holes, each one the labor of a day or two
for a savage; he carefully takes out the dust with his
iron spoon ; he inserts his wedges, one in each hole, and
protects the sides of the holes and gives resistance to his
wedges by thin pieces of half-round iron (or shims) ; he
marks the red line which he has drawn, with his chisel,
carefully cutting it straight; and then how carefully he
drives each wedge in succession, fearful lest he should
not have a good split!

The habit of looking at men in the gross makes their
lives have less of human interest for us. But though
there are crowds of laborers before us, yet each one
leads his little epic life each day. There is the stone¬
mason, who, methought, was simply a stony man that
hammered stone from breakfast to dinner, and dinner
to supper, and then went to his slumbers. But he, I
find, is even a man like myself, for he feels the heat of
the sun and has raised some boards on a frame to pro¬
tect him. And now, at mid-forenoon, I see his wife and
child have come and brought him drink and meat for
his lunch and to assuage the stoniness of his labor, and
sit to chat with him.

There are many rocks lying there for him to split
from end to end, and he will surely do it. This only at
the command of luxury, since stone posts are preferred
to wood. But how many moral blocks are lying there
in every man’s yard, which he surely will not split nor
earnestly endeavor to split. There lie the blocks which
will surely get split, but here lie the blocks which will

1851] MORAL EFFORT 493

surely not get split. Do we say it is too hard for hu¬
man faculties ? But does not the mason dull a basketful
of steel chisels in a day, and yet, by sharpening them
again and tempering them aright, succeed? Moral
effort! Difficulty to be overcome! ! ! Why, men work
in stone, and sharpen their drills when they go home
to dinner!

Why should Canada, wild and unsettled as it is,
impress one as an older country than the States, except
that her institutions are old. All things seem to con¬
tend there with a certain rust of antiquity, such as forms
on old armor and iron guns, the rust of conventions and
formalities. If the rust was not on the tinned roofs and
spires, it was on the inhabitants.1

2 p. m. — To Hubbard’s Meadow Grove.

The skunk-cabbage’s checkered fruit (spadix), one
three inches long; all parts of the flower but the anthers
left and enlarged. Bidens cemua , or nodding burr-
marigold, like a small sunflower (with rays) in Hey-
wood Brook, i. e. beggar-tick. Bidens connata (?.),
without rays, in Hubbard’s Meadow. Blue-eyed grass
still. Drooping neottia very common. I see some yellow
butterflies and others occasionally and singly only.
The smilax berries are mostly turned dark. I started
a great bittern from the weeds at the swimming-place.

It is very hot and dry weather. We have had no rain
for a week, and yet the pitcher-plants have water in
them. Are they ever quite dry ? Are they not replen¬
ished by the dews always, and, being shaded by the
1 [Excursions, pp. 80, 81; Riv. 100.]

JOURNAL

494

[Sept. 11

grass, saved from evaporation? What wells for the
birds!

The white-red-purple-berried bush in Hubbard’s
Meadow, whose berries were fairest a fortnight ago,
appears to be the Viburnum nudum, or withe-rod. Our
cornel (the common) with berries blue one side, whitish
the other, appears to be either the Comus sericea or
C. stolonijera of Gray, i. e. the silky, or the red-osier
cornel {osier rouge), though its leaves are neither silky
nor downy nor rough.

This and the last four or five nights have been per¬
haps the most sultry in the year thus far.

Sept. 12. Not till after 8 a. m. does the fog clear off
so much that I see the sun shining in patches on Naw-
shawtuct. This is the season of fogs.

Like knight, like esquire. When Benvenuto Cellini
was attacked by the constables in Rome, his boy Cencio
assisted him, or at least stood by, and afterward related
his master’s exploits; “and as they asked him several
times whether he had been afraid, he answered that
they should propose the question to me, for he had been
affected upon the occasion just in the same manner
that I was.”

Benvenuto Cellini relates in his memoirs that, during
his confinement in the castle of St. Angelo in Rome, he
had a terrible dream or vision in which certain events
were communicated to him which afterward came to
pass, and he adds: “From the very moment that 1
beheld the phenomenon, there appeared (strange to re¬
late!) a resplendent light over my head, which has dis-

BENVENUTO CELLINI

495

1851]

played itself conspicuously to all that I have thought
proper to show it to, but those were very few. This
shining light is to be seen in the morning over my
shadow till two o’clock in the afternoon, and it appears
to the greatest advantage when the grass is moist with
dew : it is likewise visible in the evening at sunset. This
phenomenon I took notice of when I was at Paris, be¬
cause the air is exceedingly clear in that climate, so that
I could distinguish it there much plainer than in Italy,
where mists are much more frequent; but I can still see
it even here, and show it to others, though not to the
same advantage as in France.” This reminds me of the
halo around my shadow which I notice from the cause¬
way in the morning, — also by moonlight, — as if, in
the case of a man of an excitable imagination, this were
basis enough for his superstition.1

After I have spent the greater part of a night abroad
in the moonlight, I am obliged to sleep enough more
the next night to make up for it, — Endymionis som-
num dormire (to sleep an Endymion sleep), as the an¬
cients expressed it.2 And there is something gained still
by thus turning the day into night. Endymion is said
to have obtained of Jupiter the privilege of sleeping as
much as he would. Let no man be afraid of sleep, if
his weariness comes of obeying his Genius. He who
has spent the night with the gods sleeps more innocently
by day than the sluggard who has spent the day with
the satyrs sleeps by night. He who has travelled to
fairyland in the night sleeps by day more innocently

1 [Walden, pp. 224, 225; Riv. 316, 317.]

2 [Excursions, p. 331; Riv. 407.]

496

JOURNAL

[Sept. 12

than he who is fatigued by the merely trivial labors
of the day sleeps by night. That kind of life which,
sleeping, we dream that we live awake, in our walks by
night, we, waking, live, while our daily life appears as a
dream.

2 p. m. — To the Three Friends’ Hill beyond Flint’s
Pond, via railroad, R. W. E.’s wood-path south side
Walden, George Heywood’s cleared lot, and Smith’s
orchard; return via east of Flint’s Pond, via Goose
Pond and my old home to railroad.

I go to Flint’s Pond for the sake of the mountain view
from the hill beyond, looking over Concord. I have
thought it the best, especially in the winter, which I can
get in this neighborhood. It is worth the while to see
the mountains in the horizon once a day. * I have thus
seen some earth which corresponds to my least earthly
and trivial, to my most heavenward-looking, thoughts.
The earth seen through an azure, an ethereal, veil. They
are the natural terrifies, elevated brows, of the earth,
looking at which, the thoughts of the beholder are nat¬
urally elevated and sublimed, — etherealized. I wish
to see the earth through the medium of much air or
heaven, for there is no paint like the air. Mountains
thus seen are worthy of worship. I go to Flint’s Pond
also to see a rippling lake and a reedy island in its midst,
— Reed Island. A man should feed his senses with the
best that the land affords.1

At the entrance to the Deep Cut, I heard the tele¬
graph-wire vibrating like an seolian harp. It reminded
me suddenly, — reservedly, with a beautiful paucity
1 [Channing, p. 163.]

THE TELEGRAPH HARP

497

1851]

of communication, even silently, such was its effect on
my thoughts, — it reminded me, I say, with a certain
pathetic moderation, of what finer and deeper stirrings
I was susceptible, which grandly set all argument and
dispute aside, a triumphant though transient exhibi¬
tion of the truth. It told me by the faintest imaginable
strain, it told me by the finest strain that a human ear
can hear, yet conclusively and past all refutation, that
there were higher, infinitely higher, planes of life which
it behooved me never to forget. As I was entering the
Deep Cut, the wind, which was conveying a message to
me from heaven, dropped it on the wire of the tele¬
graph which it vibrated as it passed. I instantly sat
down on a stone at the foot of the telegraph-pole, and
attended to the communication. It merely said : “ Bear
in mind. Child, and never for an instant forget, that
there are higher planes, infinitely higher planes, of life
than this thou art now travelling on. Know that the goal
is distant, and is upward, and is worthy all your life’s
efforts to attain to.” And then it ceased, and though
I sat some minutes longer I heard nothing more.

There is eveiy variety and degree of inspiration
from mere fullness of life to the most rapt mood. A
human soul is played on even as this wire, which now
vibrates slowly and gently so that the passer can hardly
hear it, and anon the sound swells and vibrates with
such intensity as if it would rend the wire, as far as the
elasticity and tension of the wire permits, and now it
dies away and is silent, and though the breeze contin¬
ues to sweep over it, no strain comes from it, and the
traveller hearkens in vain. It is no small gain to have

498

JOURNAL

[Sept. 12

this wire stretched through Concord, though there may
be no office here. Thus I make my own use of the tele¬
graph, without consulting the directors, like the spar¬
rows, which I perceive use it extensively for a perch.
Shall I not go to this office to hear if there is any com¬
munication for me, as steadily as to the post-office in
the village ? 1

I can hardly believe that there is so great a difference
between one year and another as my journal shows.
The 11th of this month last year, the river was as high
as it commonly is in the spring, over the causeway on
the Comer road. It is now quite low. Last year, Octo¬
ber 9th, the huckleberries were fresh and abundant on
Conantum. They are now already dried up.

We yearn to see the mountains daily, as the Israelites
yearned for the promised land, and we daily live the
fate of Moses, who only looked into the promised land
from Pisgah before he died.

On Monday, the 15th instant, I am going to per¬
ambulate the bounds of the town. As I am partial to
across-lot routes, this appears to be a very proper duty
for me to perform, for certainly no route can well be
chosen which shall be more across-lot, since the roads
in no case run round the town but ray out from its cen¬
tre, and my course will lie across each one. It is almost
as if I had undertaken to walk round the town at the
greatest distance from its centre and at the same time
from the surrounding villages. There is no public house
near the line. It is a sort of reconnoissance of its fron¬
tiers authorized by the central government of the town,
1 [Charming, pp. 199, 200.]

A PIGEON-PLACE

1851]

499

which will bring the surveyor in contact with whatever
wild inhabitant or wilderness its territory embraces.

This appears to be a very ancient custom, and I find
that this word “perambulation” has exactly the same
meaning that it has at present in Johnson and Walker’s
dictionary. A hundred years ago they went round the
towns of this State every three years. And the old
selectmen tell me that, before the present split stones
were set up in 1829, the bounds were marked by a heap
of stones, and it was customary for each selectman to add
a stone to the heap.

Saw a pigeon-place on George Heywood’s cleared
lot, — the six dead trees set up for the pigeons to alight
on, and the brush house close by to conceal the man.
I was rather startled to find such a thing going now in
Concord. The pigeons on the trees looked like fabu¬
lous birds with their long tails and their pointed breasts.
I could hardly believe they were alive and not some
wooden birds used for decoys, they sat so still; and,
even when they moved their necks, I thought it was
the effect of art. As they were not catching then, I
approached and scared away a dozen birds who were
perched on the trees, and found that they were freshly
baited there, though the net was carried away, per¬
chance to some other bed. The smooth sandy bed was
covered with buckwheat, wheat or rye, and acorns.
Sometimes they use com, shaved off the ear in its pre¬
sent state with a knife. There were left the sticks with
which they fastened the nets. As I stood there, I heard
a rushing sound and, looking up, saw a flock of thirty
or forty pigeons dashing toward the trees , who suddenly

500

JOURNAL

[Sept. 12

whirled on seeing me and circled round and made a new
dash toward the bed, as if they would fain alight if I
had not been there, then steered off. I crawled into the
bough house and lay awhile looking through the leaves,
hoping to see them come again and feed, but they did
not while I stayed. This net and bed belong to one
Harrington of Weston, as I hear. Several men still take
pigeons in Concord every year; by a method, methinks,
extremely old and which I seem to have seen pictured
in some old book of fables or symbols, and yet few in
Concord know exactly how it is done. And yet it is
all done for money and because the birds fetch a good
price, just as the farmers raise com and potatoes. I am
always expecting that those engaged in such a pursuit
will be somewhat less grovelling and mercenary than
the regular trader or farmer, but I fear that it is not
so.

Found a violet, apparently Viola cucvllata , or hood¬
leaved violet, in bloom in Baker’s Meadow beyond
Pine Hill; also the Bidens cemua , nodding burr-mari¬
gold, with five petals, in same place. Went through the
old corn-field on the hillside beyond, now grown up to
birches and hickories, — woods where you feel the old
corn-hills under your feet; for these, not being dis¬
turbed or levelled in getting the crop, like potato-hills,
last an indefinite while; and by some they are called
Indian corn-fields, though I think erroneously, not only
from their position in rocky soil frequently, but because
the squaws probably, with their clamshells or thin
stones or wooden hoes, did not hill their com more than
many now recommend.

1851] AN ELUSIVE SCENT 501

IVhat we call woodbine is the Vitis hederacea, or
common creeper, or American ivy.

When I got into the Lincoln road, I perceived a sin¬
gular sweet scent in the air, which I suspected arose
from some plant now in a peculiar state owing to the
season, but though I smelled everything around, I could
not detect it, but the more eagerly I smelled, the further
I seemed to be from finding it; but when I gave up
the search, again it would be wafted to me. It was one
of the sweet scents which go to make the autumn air,
which fed my sense of smell rarely and dilated my
nostrils. I felt the better for it. Methinks that I pos¬
sess the sense of smell in greater perfection than usual,
and have the habit of smelling of every plant I pluck.
How autumnal is the scent of ripe grapes now by the
roadside ! 1

From the pond-side hill I perceive that the forest
leaves begin to look rather rusty or brown. The pen¬
dulous, drooping barberries are pretty well reddened.
I am glad when the berries look fair and plump. I love
to gaze at the low island in the pond, — at any island
or inaccessible land. The isle at which you look always
seems fairer than the mainland on which you stand.

I had already bathed in Walden as I passed, but now
I forgot that I had been wetted, and wanted to embrace
and mingle myself with the water of Flint’s Pond this
warm afternoon, to get wet inwardly and deeply.

Found on the shore of the pond that singular willow¬
like herb in blossom, though its petals were gone. It
grows up two feet from a large woody horizontal root,
1 [Charming, p. 217.]

502

JOURNAL

[Sept. 12

and droops over to the sand again, meeting which, it puts
out a myriad rootlets from the side of its stem, fastens
itself, and curves upward again to the air, thus spanning
or looping itself along. The bark just above the ground
thickens into a singular cellular or spongy substance,
which at length appears to crack nearer the earth, giv¬
ing that part of the plant a winged and somewhat four¬
sided appearance. It appears to be the cellular tissue,
or what is commonly called the green bark, and like¬
wise invests the root to a great thickness, somewhat like
a fungus, and is of a fawn-color. The Lythrum verticil-
latum, or swamp loosestrife, or grass poly, but I think
better named, as in Dewey, swamp-willow-herb.

The prinos berries are pretty red. Any redness like
cardinal-flowers, or poke, or the evening sky, or che-
ronsea, excites us as a red flag does cows and turkeys.

Sept. 13. Railroad causeway, before sunrise.

Here is a morning after a warm, clear, moonlight
night almost entirely without dew or fog. It has been
a little breezy through the night, it is true; but why
so great a difference between this and other mornings
of late ? I can walk in any direction in the fields with¬
out wetting my feet.

I see the same rays in the dun, buff, or fawn-colored
sky now, just twenty minutes before sunrise, though
they do not extend quite so far as at sundown the other
night. Why these rays ? What is it divides the light of
the sun? Is it thus divided by distant inequalities in
the surface of the earth, behind which the other parts
are concealed, and since the morning atmosphere is

1851] THE CROSS-LEAVED POLYGALA 503

clearer they do not reach so far? Some small island
clouds are the first to look red.

The cross-leaved polygala emits its fragrance as if
at will. You are quite sure you smelled it and are
ravished with its sweet fragrance, but now it has no
smell. You must not hold it too near, but hold it on all
sides and at all distances, and there will perchance be
wafted to you sooner or later a very sweet and pene¬
trating fragrance. What it is like you cannot surely tell,
for you do not enjoy it long enough nor in volume
enough to compare it. It is very likely that you will not
discover any fragrance while you are rudely smelling
at it; you can only remember that you once perceived
it. Both this and the caducous polygala are now some¬
what faded.

Now the sun is risen. The sky is almost perfectly
clear this morning; not a cloud in the horizon. The
morning is not pensive like the evening, but joyous and
youthful, and its blush is soon gone. It is unfallen
day. The Bedford sunrise bell rings sweetly and musi¬
cally at this hour, when there is no bustle in the village
to drown it. Bedford deserves a vote of thanks from
Concord for it. It is a great good at these still and
sacred hours, when towns can hear each other. It would
be nought at noon.

Sept. 14. A great change in the weather from sultry
to cold, from one thin coat to a thick coat or two thin
ones.

2 p. m. — To Cliffs.

The dry grass yields a crisped sound to my feet. The

504

JOURNAL

[Sept. 14

white oak which appears to have made part of a hedge
fence once, now standing in Hubbard’s fence near the
Corner road, where it stretches along horizontally,
is (one of its arms, for it has one running each way)
two and a half feet thick, with a sprout growing per¬
pendicularly out of it eighteen inches in diameter. The
corn-stalks standing in stacks, in long rows along the
edges of the corn-fields, remind me of stacks of muskets.

As soon as berries are gone, grapes come. The
chalices of the Rhexia Virginica , deer-grass or meadow-
beauty, are literally little reddish chalices now, though
many still have petals, — little cream pitchers.1
The caducous polygala in C-J cool places is faded al¬
most white. I see the river at the foot of Fair Haven
Hill running up-stream before the strong cool wind,
which here strikes it from the north. The cold wind
makes me shudder after my bath, before I get dressed.

Polygonum aviculare — knot-grass, goose-grass, or
door-grass — still in bloom.

Sept. 15. Monday. Ice in the pail under the pump,
and quite a frost.

Commenced perambulating the town bounds. At

7.30 a. m. rode in company with - and Mr. - to

the bound between Acton and Concord near Paul Dud¬
ley’s. Mr. - told a story of his wife walking in the

fields somewhere, and, to keep the rain off, throwing her
gown over her head and holding it in her mouth, and
so being poisoned about her mouth from the skirts of
her dress having come in contact with poisonous plants.

1 [Channing, p. 222.]

1851] PERAMBULATING THE BOUNDS 505

At Dudley’s, which house is handsomely situated, with
five large elms in front, we met the selectmen of Acton,
- and - . Here were five of us. It ap¬
peared that we weighed, - I think about 160,

— 155, - about 140, - 130, myself 127. -

described the wall about or at Forest Hills Cemetery
in Roxbury as being made of stones upon which they
were careful to preserve the moss, so that it cannot be
distinguished from a very old wall.

Found one intermediate bound-stone near the powder-
mill drying-house on the bank of the river. The work¬
men there wore shoes without iron tacks. He said that
the kernel-house was the most dangerous, the drying-
house next, the press-house next. One of the powder-
mill buildings in Concord? The potato vines and the
beans which were still green are now blackened and
flattened by the frost.

END OF VOLUME II

Cijf XU&errfftre

H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY
CAMBRIDGE
MASSACHUSETTS